Tag: campaign finance

WILMINGTON, Del. — President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee said Saturday that they raised more than $90 million in March and ended the year’s first quarter with $192 million-plus in cash on hand, further stretching their money advantage over Donald Trump and the Republicans.

The Biden campaign and its affiliated entities reported collecting $187 million from January through March and said that 96% of all donations were less than $200.

That total was bolstered by the $26 million-plus that Biden reported raising from a March 28 event at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan that featured former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, said it raised $50.5 million from an event Saturday with major donors at the Florida home of billionaire investor John Paulson, setting a single-event fundraising record.

Biden’s campaign says the pace of donations has allowed it to undertake major digital and television advertising campaigns in key states and to work with the DNC and state parties to better mobilize would-be supporters before the November election.

The campaign said the $192 million-plus as of March 31 was the highest total ever by any Democratic candidate. About 1.6 million people have donated to the campaign since Biden announced in April 2023 that he was seeking a second term. The campaign raised more than $10 million in the 24 hours after the president’s State of the Union speech in early March.

“The money we are raising is historic, and it’s going to the critical work of building a winning operation, focused solely on the voters who will decide this election -– offices across the country, staff in our battleground states, and a paid media program meeting voters where they are,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. She scoffed at “Trump’s cash-strapped operation that is funneling the limited and billionaire-reliant funds it has to pay off his various legal fees.”

Trump is facing four separate criminal indictments. He and the Republican National Committee reported raising $65.5 million in March and having $93.1 million on hand. As the incumbent in 2020, Trump had a huge campaign treasury when he lost to Biden.

Trump campaign officials have said they do not expect to raise as much as the Democrats, but will have the money they need. The Biden campaign says its strong fundraising shows enthusiasm for the president, defying his low approval ratings and polls showing that most voters would rather not see a 2020 rematch.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee said they raised more than $97 million in the final three months of last year, boosted by a star-studded December fundraising blitz that came even as the political world’s attention shifted to the start of the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

The Biden campaign said Monday that it took in $235 million from its launch last April until the end of 2023 and finished the year with $117 million in cash on hand — which it said was the highest total amassed by any Democratic candidate at this point in the cycle. More than 520,000 donors made 926,000-plus contributions in the quarter, it said.

“This historic haul — proudly powered by strong and growing grassroots enthusiasm — sends a clear message,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the manager of Biden’s reelection campaign, said in a statement. “Our democracy and hard-fought basic rights and freedoms are on the line in 2024, and these numbers prove that the American people know the stakes.”

The president has made defending democracy a centerpiece of his reelection bid and repeatedly decried Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement as posing dire threats to the nation’s founding principals. The GOP primary begins with Iowa’s caucus on Monday with Trump as the early front-runner — and the Biden campaign noted that he and his top primary competitors have already spent $100 million on advertising in the leadoff primary state alone.

Biden traveled to Pennsylvania on Friday and stopped at three stores to make the case that his policies have helped grow the economy and spur small business. It was a change from the set speeches he usually gives, meant to highlight ways his economic plans have ensured strong employment — even while triggering inflation that worries voters.

Meanwhile, Trump and his top primary rivals, including former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, made final weekend appeals to would-be caucusgoers as temperatures in Iowa turned frigid.

Since the Biden campaign’s launch, nearly 1 million supporters have made more than 2.3 million contributions, and 97% of all its fourth-quarter 2023 donations were under $200, with the average contribution totaling $41.88, it announced. Those totals include donations to Biden’s political operation and to a network of joint fundraising arrangements with the national and state Democratic parties.

Biden’s campaign said December was his strongest fundraising month to date, exceeding a record it said was previously set in November. That helped last year’s final quarter outpace the period from July through September, when Biden and his party reported raising $71-plus million.

The campaign said the president has held 110 fundraisers since launching, including 39 in last year’s fourth quarter alone. That included a string of fundraisers before the Christmas holidays that took him to Boston for a trio of events, one of which featured singer-songwriter James Taylor, and three days in California for gatherings with the likes of Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand.

That fundraising push came after Biden, who frequently calls himself the “most pro-union” president in U.S, history, previously staying away from raising money in Los Angeles for months during the writers and actors strikes. It was meant to quiet some donors who had privately grumbled that the president wasn’t doing enough to stock his campaign coffers ahead of November’s election, which is likely to be hard-fought and close.

Even with so much travel focused on fundraising, however, Biden campaign officials had tried to manage expectations. They said in December that they hoped to raise roughly $67 million for 2023’s fourth quarter — which would be consistent with the end-of-the-off-year totals from previous Democratic candidates.

Instead, Biden’s latest haul outpaced that of President Barack Obama, who with the DNC raised an un-inflation adjusted $68 million in the final three months of 2011, ahead of his successful reelection the following year. Trump’s campaign announced raising $46 million in the last quarter of 2019 and had $102.7 million on hand ahead of a 2020 race it eventually lost to Biden — though its combined war chest with the Republican National Committee at the time was far more formidable.

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LOS ANGELES — If you’re a Democrat with money to burn and friends in high places, you can spend thousands on tickets to a fundraiser with President Joe Biden. If not, keep reading to see what you’re missing.

With an election year around the corner, Biden is accelerating his fundraising to prepare for an astronomically expensive campaign. (Think billions, not millions.) In this rarefied world, money equals access, and supporters regularly pay top dollar for a personal glimpse of the world’s most powerful man.

Biden is collecting cash across the Los Angeles area this weekend, and his first stop was a sprawling estate where the host joked “it’s just a normal Friday at our house” as hundreds of donors sipped wine in the backyard.

“You’re the reason why we’re gonna win, God willing, in 2024,” Biden told the audience.

Each fundraiser is a little different, but they generally follow a similar script. Here’s what it’s like inside the presidential money hunt.

Fundraisers are a rare glimpse at the lives of the country’s wealthiest and most influential. Biden’s motorcade has rolled up to a mountain villa in Park City, Utah, a townhouse in Manhattan and a sprawling estate at the top of the Hollywood hills.

In an apartment with floor-to-ceiling views of Central Park, reporters were required to slip disposable covers over their shoes before they could enter the living room where donors nibbled on crustless tea sandwiches.

At Friday’s fundraiser in Los Angeles, attendees wore colored wrist bands that indicated where they should sit. Ushers held up red, green, blue and orange signs to direct them to the right place.

The press corps can enter fundraisers only to hear Biden’s formal remarks, and no cameras are allowed. When he’s mingling with supporters or answering their questions, reporters are sequestered in a garage, home gym or spare bedroom. Sometimes they just remain outside on the sidewalk.

The lucky host often gets the privilege of introducing the president. Usually, these remarks are predictably laudatory, but sometimes they get spicy.

Randi McGinn, a prominent New Mexico lawyer, joked about the attractiveness of the president’s Secret Service detail and referenced Donald Trump’s dalliance with a porn star.

Biden smiled — or grimaced, it was hard to tell — and made the sign of the cross as she spoke.

The president always thanks his hosts and any elected officials present. If he spots any children, Biden often jokingly warns them “this is going to be boring, boring, boring for you.”

Although fundraisers are often run-of-the-mill occasions, careful reporters know to stay attentive. Biden has a history of being more candid than usual when surrounded by deep-pocketed supporters.

Biden upset China in June by describing President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” during a different fundraiser in California. He also said Xi was unaware that a Chinese balloon that floated over the United States was being used for spying.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said.

In Park City in August, Biden ruminated about his signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act.

“I wish I hadn’t called it that,” Biden said, “because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it does to do with dealing with providing for alternatives that generate economic growth.”

And just Tuesday in Weston, Massachusetts, the 81-year-old president suggested he might not be seeking reelection if it wasn’t for Trump’s comeback bid.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said. “But we cannot let him win, for the sake of the country.”

Donors pay top dollar to hear Biden speak at private events, but reporters can rattle off some of his well-worn lines from memory.

The president says he’s “never been more optimistic” about the country as long as we “remember who in hell we are.” He rattles off his legislative accomplishments, from limiting prescription drug costs to investing in infrastructure like roads and bridges. He says the rich need to “pay their fair share” of taxes. He warns that the U.S. is at “an inflection point.”

He usually talks about meeting with Xi while they each served as vice presidents of their respective countries. In Biden’s telling, Xi asked him to define America. “I said, ‘I can do it in one word — possibilities,’” Biden says.

A centerpiece of Biden’s fundraisers is his story of deciding to run for president against Trump in 2020.

He talks about “people coming out of the woods, carrying torches” during the 2017 marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, and “chanting the same antisemitic bile that was chanted in Germany in the ’30s.” When Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the violence, Biden says, “that’s when I decided I couldn’t remain silent any longer.”

Fundraisers are an opportunity for Biden to rile up his supporters and score points on his opponents in a friendly environment.

He often says “this is not your father’s Republican Party,” and he warns about “the extreme right, the MAGA movement,” referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Sometimes he avoids mentioning Trump’s name by making oblique references to “my predecessor.” But given Trump’s standing as the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination, Biden has seen little reason to hold back.

He generally warns about the potential for cuts to health care or rollbacks to environmental programs if Trump wins next year. And he always keeps the focus on what he describes as a threat to the country’s institutions.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” Biden said in Minneapolis last month, “are determined to destroy this democracy.”

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Megerian reported from Washington.