Rick Santorum raised more than $1 million in small campaign donations Wednesday, one day after coming within a rounding error of Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses, his campaign confirmed to CBS News.
The haul is the former Pennsylvania senator's largest one-day total since the race began and about half of all the money he had raised thus far, National Journal reports.
Santorum fell just eight votes short of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Tuesday in Iowa, where Republican voters began the 2012 nominating contest with their non-binding selection.
The Republican race quickly moved to New Hampshire, which holds the first primary January 10 and South Carolina, which hold its contest January 21.
Santorum, the newly anointed coalition conservative challenger to Romney, faces a daunting operational challenge of trying to turn his electoral success in Iowa into kind of campaign machine could compete with the Romney campaign juggernaut.
Santorum now has to build a donor network and do it fast. Romney is widely expected to win New Hampshire, where voters are less likely to be attracted to Santorum's social conservative message.
South Carolina could be fertile ground for another heated contest between Romney and a more conservative candidate. Romney is seen as too moderate by many of the most conservative Republicans, who tend to be most active in the Repubican nominating process.
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