Rick's peeps leak his money totals early... "appears well-financed" according to Wayne Slater...

It looks like Rick's campaign gave Wayne Slater a scoop (link). Excerpt follows...

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry raised more than $7 million in the last six months and goes into the final stretch of the GOP primary for governor with $11.6 million in the bank.

The total represents an escalation in fundraising in his re-election bid against Republican challenger Kay Bailey Hutchison.

The deadline to file reports with the state for the latest fundraising period is Friday. Neither campaign has yet filed, but a person close to the Perry camp confirmed the amounts he will report.

The contest between Perry and Hutchison for the Republican nomination in the March primary is expected to cost the candidates as much as $25 million each.

So far, Perry has raised about $16 million total to try to fend off Hutchison's primary challenge.

Although she has led Perry in early fundraising, beginning with a $6 million transfer from her Senate account, Hutchison has struggled in recent months and trails in the polls.

Friday's reports will give an indication whether Hutchison's problems have affected her fundraising.

"We're very pleased with how we are positioned in this race," said Hutchison spokeswoman Jen Baker. "We have the money we need to be competitive."

I will still be interested to see if these are the true final numbers for Rick... including the cash on hand numbers...

Kay had a lot more cash on hand at the 6 month mark of 2009 because Rick was hampered by state laws restricting his collections of donations to the final week of June. Kay also transferred almost her entire war chest from money left over from her senate campaigns in the past... giving her a huge head start. The past 6 months might have been different, but by the way Kay is using her resources it looks like she raised just as much as Rick if not more from July through December...

Kay has been spending a lot more money than Rick on campaign commercials so far, but it looks like Rick is now matching Kay on television as of the past couple of days... I have seen Rick's ad just as much as Kay's ad so far this week. There is really only a month to go until early voting... and another two weeks before the real election day... so based on nearly 12 million cash on hand right now Rick's campaign will probably need at least few million more dollars between here and election day to stay up on air state wide plus pay their overhead and other expenses...

I would speculate that Kay is the same way... she probably has a similar number raised in the second half of 2009 and a similar cash on hand total... maybe even higher than Rick's number... which would mean that she will also need to raise quite a bit of money between now and March...

By comparison Debra Medina was telling reporter Omar Villafranca that she had raised 200 thousand... and probably spent a good deal of that... hardly enough to go on state wide television in earnest for more than a day or two...

The reports are due on Friday, so we will get a much better look then.