Rick Santorum Raised $250,000 Tuesday Night

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Rick Santorum raised some $250,000 Tuesday night as supporters flocked to the former Pennsylvania senator during his surprise triple victory in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado.

The GOP presidential candidate said that figure was part of $400,000 his campaign gathered across a two-day bump that was likely only the beginning of what could be a huge momentum-gathering period of his race.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum

"I think last night we raised a quarter of a million dollars online," Santorum told CNN. "So we're doing really well, and we feel like going forward we're going to have the money we need to make the case we want to make."

Santorum's campaign has run on a shoestring budget for most of the 2012 GOP primary election cycle, yet he has managed to win three states (not including the "beauty contest" Missouri primary) and some 69 delegates.

Those numbers are good enough to place him squarely in second, behind front-runner Mitt Romney, who not too long ago likely expected to win the majority of delegates in Colorado and Minnesota.

Santorum's increase in fund-raising from state primary and caucus victories also has made the candidate a direct target of fresh negative attacks from Romney's campaign.

Romney's camp emailed a couple of press releases to reporters Wednesday that called out the former senator for his supposed abuse of earmarks when he was in the U.S. Senate.

"While Newt Gingrich may have opened the door to the abuse of earmark spending, Rick Santorum walked right through it," Andrea Saul, a Romney spokeswoman, said in a statement.

In another email, Saul called Santorum a Washington insider that conservatives can't trust to fix the country's problems.

Santorum campaign sources said they were prepared for Romney to barrage their campaign for the next three weeks with attack ads, but those campaign sources also said they would simply move forward with ramping up organization in Arizona, Michigan and the crucial Super Tuesday states.

-- Written by Joe Deaux in New York

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