On Thursday, Rick Santorum said that a shortage of campaign cash caused him to call off his presidential campaign.
"We for the first time in the campaign had a debt," Santorum said on Family Research Council president Tony Perkins's Today's Issues radio show. "The debt was more substantial than I was comfortable with."
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"We didn't have a lot of money to begin with," Santorum said. "It was a situation where we simply didn't have the resources to compete going forward."
Santorum added that his losing bid to win the Wisconsin primary crushed his campaign coffers. According to one estimate, the biggest pro-Romney group, Restore Our Future, spent around $3 million on ads in Wisconsin while Santorum's biggest super PAC spent around $810,000, giving Romney close to a 4-1 advantage.
Money was always an issue for the Santorum campaign. Romney outspent Santorum in virtually every contest, and in some contests margins for how much more Romney was spending ranged up to 55-1. While the Santorum campaign consistently tried to put a positive spin on their low-expense campaign, the lack of funds finally caught up with them.
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Ahead of Pennsylvania, Santorum said, he realized he needed to call off his campaign. "Romney had already laid down $4 million of advertising, and we were looking at probably not being able to spend a penny on advertising," he said. "You just reach a point where you want to compete, but you have to be able to compete, and we felt we couldn't."
On Tuesday, shortly after he announced that he was suspending his campaign, Santorum posted a letter on his website asking for donations to help pay off his campaign debt.
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