Newt Drained Campaign with Private Jets

Newt Gingrich's 2012 presidential campaign has been plagued by money issues, including a $500,000 tab for chartered jets so the former Republican House speaker could make it home at night, the Washington Post reports.

According to the Post, Gingrich had no finance team when his campaign began a month ago, and advisers quickly discovered they lacked the $25,000 needed to enter the Iowa straw poll in August, as well as $30,000 to buy a list featuring the names of past participants in the Iowa caucuses.

Flying was an even bigger financial headache, the Post says. Gingrich didn't want to rely on commercial airlines, because he waned to be sure he could return home at night. So private planes had to be chartered, running the bill to  as much as $500,000, a campaign source told the Post.

“Newt has not grasped that a presidential campaign is different from running around the country giving speeches," a Gingrich friend told the Post.

Most of Gingrich's top campaign staffers quit en masse on Thursday.