Montandon has raised less than $1 million

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Montandon, who kicked off his campaign this week, has fallen short of his goal of raising $1 million by now, he said.

Montandon wouldn’t say how much he has in his campaign account, which he doesn’t have to disclose formally until January.

“We’re not at $1 million, but it’s in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands,” Montandon said Tuesday. The $1 million mark, he said, is “not far off,” and the campaign expects to reach it soon.

The Montandon gubernatorial campaign’s only disclosure to date, in January 2009, showed just $20,000 in donations, a paltry sum that led some observers to question the campaign’s seriousness and viability. Of the $20,000, $15,000 was transferred from Montandon’s mayoral campaign account and his political action committee.

As Jane Ann Morrison recently noted, under Nevada’s campaign finance disclosure laws, contribution reports are few and far between, and even then don’t come close to giving a full picture. It’s virtually impossible to tell from the reports filed how much cash on hand candidates really have.

Sources say in addition to his mayoral account, Montandon is sitting on quite a pile in his PAC account. From the reports available online, it’s not clear.