End of the Trail: Brownback. Photo: Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

And then there were nine. On Friday, Sam Brownback will drop his bid for the GOP presidential nomination. The Kansas senator, while popular with the conservative base of the party, never seemed to catch fire in the polls. Yet that’s not the reason he’s quitting. A source close to Brownback, who declined to speak on the record because the senator has yet to announce his intentions publicly, says the decision is purely about the money--that is, his lack of it. Brownback raised just $4.2 million during the first nine months of the campaign and blew through most of it, ending the third-quarter with just under $95,000 in the bank. (Interestingly, that’s about how much John McCain has to spend in the primary, when you figure in his campaign’s debts.)

Where did the money go? Well, for one thing, Brownback bet the farm on Iowa. According to his latest campaign reports, he spent at least $300,000 on the Ames Straw Poll--not including the potentially thousands of dollars more the senator spent on “get out the vote” efforts related to the event that were not clearly identified among his expenditures. According to his Federal Election Commission filing, Brownback spent $128,900 on straw poll tickets alone--which, at $35 a pop means he bought more than 3600 tickets. Yet Brownback got just 2,192 votes that day, coming in third, so that means he likely paid for someone to vote for another candidate. Bummer. He spent nearly $20,000 on buses to bring his would-be supporters to Ames.

What’s the secret behind Mitt Romney’s surge in the Iowa polls? Maybe it’s the food. The former Massachusetts governor has been pulling out all the stops to win this weekend’s Ames Straw Poll, blanketing Iowa with new TV ads and organizing buses to get supporters to the polls on Saturday. But his campaign is also throwing lots of money behind free food. On Wednesday, Romney held one of his "Ask Mitt Anything" town halls at a restaurant outside Iowa City, where prospective Romney supporters were treated to a free buffet. And we’re not talking sandwiches or finger food. Think Las Vegas style: shrimp cocktail, platters of steak, pasta salad, mashed potatoes and at least 10 different kinds of dessert, including strawberry cheesecake, brownies and multi-layer chocolate cake. Compare this to Duncan Hunter, who’s spent the past few days campaigning outside McDonald's restaurants around the state, where sad to say he wasn’t handing out Big Macs.

Wooing voters’ hearts through their stomachs is nothing new, especially in Iowa where presidential candidates are judged not only by their foreign policy skills but by their ability to flip a pancake. But you have to wonder: Are these people showing up for the candidate or for the free lunch? Romney held four food-related events on Wednesday and has five on his schedule today, including two coffees and an ice cream social. No word on what he’s planning to feed his supporters in Ames-though he’s already got competition from Sam Brownback, who’s talked up his barbecue, and Mike Huckabee, who is air-lifting a 150-pound watermelon in from Arkansas.