Palin 2012 presidential run boosted by $1m war chest

A Sarah Palin presidential bid in 2012 is looking ever more likely after a political action committee set up to help her support like-minded Republican candidates filed a financial report showing the former governor of Alaska is sitting on a war chest of over $1m.

The report, filed to the US Federal Election Commission by SarahPAC, and seen by Politico, shows the group raised more money - $866,000 - in the second quarter of the year than in any other quarter since its formation in January 2009. Palin spent $742,000 over the same quarter, most of it on fundraising and building up her support within the American right.

Other supposed 2012 presidential candidates also have PACs, and financially at least they pose a stiff challenge to Palin. Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty raised more than $700,000 in the last quarter, while Mitt Romney, who John McCain beat to the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, raised more than $1m in the two months of April and May alone.

But what SarahPAC shows is that Palin, who has relied on occasional outbursts on her Facebook and Twitter pages to raise her profile, is using her money to become more organised.

Tim Crawford, SarahPAC's treasurer told Politico: "We didn't have a big base of people coming out of the presidential campaign... all that stuff was property of the McCain campaign. But now, I think we’ve got a pretty formidable thing going on."

Among the new staff Palin has hired is someone to help with her schedule, which has in the past been described as "chaotic". She has also started spending money on traditional fundraising tactics such as glossy direct mail drops. SarahPAC spent $154,000 on a professional mail out which, starting in April, targeted more than 500,000 conservative households asking them for money to support Palin-approved candidates in this year's November midterm elections.

Much of Palin's influence has been exercised through her popularity with the 'grassroots' anti-tax, anti-government Tea Party movement, but there are signs she is branching out. While she has donated money to the Tea Party-approved Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who is against abortion even in cases of rape and advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, Palin has also given money to Iowa gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad, who failed to win the Tea Party seal of approval for, among other things, his history of raising taxes.

The support of such people will be crucial for a 2012 presidential bid. And in a sign of the attention to detail that presidential hopefuls need to avoid being associated with scandals, Palin is paying a researcher to vet candidates before she endorses them.

She even appears to be attempting to address her weakness on foreign affairs, which has provided much sport in the past for liberal commentators.  Palin is paying Randy Scheunemann, a former foreign policy adviser to McCain, for advice on "national and international issues".

And at the end of June, after she outlined her foreign policy stance in a speech and on Facebook, Tom Donnelly, defense fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, told Foreign Policy: "In the conservative ranks and within the party, she's really quite a crucial piece in this puzzle. She's got both political and Tea Party/small government bona fides, but she also has a lot of credibility in advocating for military strength." ·