Reflecting the traditionally slow pace of summer fund-raising and lingering reluctance among many top Republican donors to commit to a candidate, aides to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, have in recent days aggressively played down expectations for their own fund-raising totals.  After weeks of hints from supporters that Mr. Perry had signed up hundreds of bundlers and could bring in as much as $20 million in the quarter to jump-start his campaign, aides said this week that $10 million was a more reasonable goal given that he had been in the race only since mid-August.  Mr. Romney expects to raise between $10 million and $13 million, people familiar with his fund-raising said, less than he raised the previous quarter. That is despite an apparently successful effort to woo some former Wall Street supporters of Mr. Obama, including an event this week in New York that they said raised about $1 million for the campaign.  “We are going to raise considerably less than we did in our first reporting period, but we will still meet our fund-raising goals for the quarter,” said Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney, adding that she expected Mr. Perry to beat Mr. Romney’s haul for the quarter.  Mr. Perry and Mr. Romney are also competing against someone who is not even officially in the race: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is the target of an intense lobbying campaign by some of the party’s most sought-after donors and party elders to join the field.  “I feel the vast majority of large Republican donors respect and admire both Romney and Perry and appreciate the fact that both of them have more established and longer records of job creation than Christie,” said Fred V. Malek, a leading Republican fund-raiser who has not committed yet to a candidate. “However, they also appreciate Christie’s courage in taking on the tough issues, and find his blunt straight talk and vigorous leadership a sharp and welcome contrast to Obama.”  Mr. Obama is almost certain to blow away the Republican field in terms of fund-raising, and his campaign has set a $55 million goal for the quarter that many donors think he is likely to exceed. But a politically tumultuous summer, marked by Mr. Obama’s protracted struggle with Congressional Republicans over raising the federal debt limit, forced the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to cancel about a dozen major fund-raising events.  In the closing days of the quarter, the Obama campaign blasted donors with repeated appeals seeking last-minute contributions, hoping to reach a benchmark of one million total donors.  “If you know you’re going to donate to this campaign eventually, what’s stopping you from doing it right now?” Mr. Biden wrote in an e-mail sent out Friday afternoon.  Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has built a loyal base of low-dollar donors, will report having raised $5 million or more, his campaign said, perhaps making him the only candidate to raise more money this quarter than last.  Aides to Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former ambassador to China, refused to discuss their expected numbers in advance of the midnight Friday deadline. The campaigns are not required to report their total fund-raising and spending to the Federal Election Commission until Oct. 15.  The end of the third quarter is likely to present a make-or-break moment for both candidates.  Mr. Huntsman closed his Florida headquarters this week to focus on winning the New Hampshire primary, in what aides said was a last-ditch bid to revive his White House prospects.  And while Mrs. Bachmann has a relatively large base of small donors, the campaign only began reaching out to big donors after she won the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa in mid-August — just as Mr. Perry’s entrance into the race overshadowed Mrs. Bachmann’s victory and provided potential supporters with another conservative alternative to Mr. Romney.  Mrs. Bachmann has also been reluctant to make personal calls to potential large-dollar supporters, according to people close to the campaign. And those she has called have not always responded with enthusiasm.  Dean Sundquist, a Minneapolis businessman who was a top donor to Mrs. Bachmann’s 2010 House campaign, said she had left a message the other day, but he did not plan to return the call, or to write a check to her presidential campaign.  “To go from the House of Representatives to the White House is a huge step,” said Mr. Sundquist. “I think that’s a really difficult position to be in.”  For Mr. Perry, the deadline will reveal how quickly he has been able to convert his network of wealthy home-state supporters into a robust presidential money machine.  “In Texas, there has been heavy and strong enthusiasm for him. He’s a homegrown product,” said Bill Miller, a prominent Austin lobbyist and Perry supporter. “But clearly, it’s not Texas he’s got to conquer. It’s the other markets.”  And while Mr. Perry has gained a foothold in New York, attending a recent fund-raiser given by the insurance industry figure Maurice R. Greenberg, the Texas governor may be hampered, some donors suggested, by new federal rules that limit donations from some financial firms to state elected officials that oversee pension funds or issuers of municipal bonds.  In recent weeks Mr. Perry has attended a round of fund-raisers in smaller cities like Shreveport, La., Memphis, Tenn., and Wheeling, W. Va., where a gathering of energy-industry executives reportedly yielded about $1 million for his campaign.
The presidential candidates sprinted toward the third-quarter fund-raising deadline with a flurry of events and last-minute appeals for contributions.