That was the total pledged to Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate Republican primary campaign against Gov. Charlie Crist in a pair of online fund-raisers known as “money bombs.”

It’s a huge number.

It doesn’t beat Crist’s best stretch of this race (he collected $1 million over three days in June). But it is 25 percent of what Rubio raised in the first nine months of his campaign and 41 percent of all the cash he had on hand to start the year, about $2.1 million.

Crist reported a total of $7.6 million in campaign cash to start 2010.

The money bombs also brought more than 8,000 donations directly to the campaign. As a comparison, Rubio’s campaign had about 11,000 donors through its first six months.

The donations were timed to the one-year anniversary Wednesday of Crist appearing at a rally with Democratic President Barack Obama to support the president’s $787 billion stimulus plan.

Rubio hoped to raise 0.001 percent of that total with his campaign’s money bomb, a 10-day effort that ended up a little short, at $720,000. However, the 20-day long money bomb hosted by U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., through the Senate Conservatives Fund, raised another $144,000, or 44 percent more than their goal.

Rubio has capitalized on conservative protests of the stimulus plan to launch campaign to the point he’s now considered by many to be the front-runner in this race. Obama’s stimulus rally, by the way, is being pegged as some as the site for the first tea party protest.

Tags: fund-raising, Marco Rubio, money bombs

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