Welp. The Q3 fundraising totals and other campaign tidbits are being announced by the Republican presidential primary candidates. There are signs that all may not be well for a couple of the Republican candidates.

Trust in the Mission PAC is a super PAC aligned with Senator Tim Scott’s run in the Republican primary race. It released a memo to donors that concludes spending right now would be a “waste of money” because the electorate “isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative.” Yikes.

“Starting today, we are going to release all of our Fall media inventory,” Trust in the Mission PAC co-chair Rob Collins wrote in the memo. “We will continue to fully fund our grassroots door knocking, conduit fundraising, event hosting, and earned media efforts.”

“We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” Collins continued. “We have done the research. We have studied the focus groups. We have been following Tim on the trail. This electorate is locked up and money spent on mass media isn’t going to change minds until we get a lot closer to voting.”

Door knockers are important because those are a campaign’s grassroots supporters. They are excited about a candidate and like to talk about him or her. Or, they don’t mind putting in the time to leave a brochure at the front door. But, losing solid funding for Fall media ads is brutal. The Scott campaign has run some ads for Tim Scott in my media market and they have been good ads, especially the ones who tell his life story. They make Scott seem relatable. Everyone likes a personal success story – overcoming very humble beginnings to rise to elected office and being a United States senator. Only in America.

But it is understandable that people don’t want to continue to support a candidate who doesn’t look like he is catching fire against the big elephant in the room – Donald Trump. The super PAC is right, as long as so many Republicans are unwilling to move on to a candidate who can serve 2 terms, if elected, and is focused on the future and not settling scores from the past, Trump may likely be the nominee. We won’t know how it all shakes out until caucus votes and primary votes are cast. We are quickly getting to that point. The first caucus and the first primary will be here before we know it. January 15, 2024 is the date of the Iowa Republican caucuses. New Hampshire hasn’t set a date yet but is expected to have its Republican primary before Feb. 8, the date for the Nevada caucus or primary.

The super PAC was pretty well funded but now it leaves questions on how involved Oracle founder Larry Ellison is with the Tim Scott campaign.

It’s not clear exactly how much the super PAC is canceling, though it could be $15 million or more. The group, according to data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm, has roughly $10 million reserved in just the next six weeks.

“We are doing what would be obvious in the business world but will mystify politicos,” Mr. Collins wrote in the memo.

The super PAC had entered July with only $15 million in cash on hand yet it soon made $40 million in television and digital reservations.

That gap raised questions about how the super PAC had secured so much money so quickly. At the center of those questions is Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who previously had been one of Mr. Scott’s biggest benefactors but had not yet been among those donors who had given to the super PAC in the first half of the year. The canceled ads are likely to raise more questions about what financial role Mr. Ellison is playing.

Scott raised $6M in third quarter fundraising. That’s good but not great.

From July through September, Scott’s campaign said his political committees raised $5.92 million and ended the quarter with $13.3 million cash on hand, of which $11.6 million can be used during the primary. The campaign also said the South Carolina senator is fully funded through the early nominating states in the primary.

In comparison, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) political committees brought in $15 million during the third quarter, but only $5 million can be used during the primary. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, another South Carolinian in the race, brought in $11 million in the third quarter with $9.1 million in cash on hand cash on hand.

Scott’s $11.6 million cash on hand bests both DeSantis and Haley but falls behind former President Donald Trump’s third-quarter figures. Trump, the front-runner to become the GOP’s next standard-bearer, raised $45.5 million with $37.5 million cash on hand, far outpacing his rivals.

I find Scott’s position more interesting than Mike Pence, who I didn’t figure had a chance to rise much in the primary. Let’s take a look at Mike Pence.

The campaign told NBC News it will report having raised $3.3 million in the third quarter, with $1.2 million cash on hand and $620,000 in debt, when its campaign finance filing is due to be made public Sunday. Pence himself chipped in $150,000 from his personal funds, the campaign said.

Pence’s numbers reveal a campaign under serious strain, operating on completely different financial terrain from that of his rivals, and they raise questions about his ability to continue to compete in the GOP primaries. Racking up debt, in particular, has long been a sign of presidential campaigns in trouble — and potentially on the verge of ending.

Pence isn’t a wealthy man. He can’t keep chipping in like that to his campaign. I think the debt he is racking up will force him out soon. He isn’t making much headway in the polls. The Real Clear Politics aggregate has Pence at 3.7%. He is behind Trump, DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy.

I’ll be surprised if Pence and Scott are in the primary after January. I look for Asa Hutchinson to drop out around Thanksgiving, the deadline he set for himself. He’s gone nowhere.