President Joe Biden’s re-election operation — his campaign, the DNC and a joint fundraising effort that includes state parties from across the country — raised more than $72 million in his first quarter since announcing he would seek a second term, he said. his campaign manager in a new statement. Video posted on Twitter.
Julia Chavez Rodriguez says in the video that Biden’s political operation received 670,000 contributions from more than 394,000 individual donors, giving him a significant cash advantage over Biden’s potential Republican rivals early in the campaign. He wouldn’t say what percentage of the money came from small donors, only sharing that 97% of donations were under $200, with an average “base” donation of $39.
The campaign did not say how much money flowed into Biden’s campaign committee, the most important fundraising figure and one that will be closely scrutinized by allies and rivals in both parties as a measure of its strength and campaign readiness. 2024. at a time when his political position is in a dangerous position for an incumbent. The Biden campaign is due to file a report with the Federal Election Commission detailing its second-quarter fundraising by the end of Saturday.
Historically, Biden had struggled to raise money for his previous campaigns, but he ultimately set a new record in 2020, becoming the first candidate for any federal office to raise $1 billion from donors while uniting Democrats against then-President Donald. Trump.
Four years ago, Biden raised more than $22 million in his first quarter of campaign fundraising, including $8.3 million from small donors. At the time, individual donation limits were lower than they are now, and Biden was campaigning against nearly two dozen other Democrats for the party’s nomination.
His first reporting in the 2024 cycle easily surpassed that, and the grand total raised by his political operation stretched even further, thanks in part to one of the incumbency’s trappings: a fundraising deal with the Democratic National Committee and everyone’s local party operations. 50 states and the District of Columbia that allows people to contribute up to $929,600 each to the so-called Biden Victory Fund.
That’s a big part of how Biden’s combined political operation has racked up $77 million in the bank across its many entities, though again, it’s unclear how much of that money is tucked away on the campaign trail compared to other Democratic Party vehicles.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign had a similar arrangement with 38 state parties, while Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign had one with 22 states, according to the Biden campaign.
Biden’s decision after his 2020 victory to heavily incorporate his political operation into the DNC for future elections was in stark contrast to Obama, whose team created a political organization known as Organizing for America after his 2008 victory. Biden’s advisers have argued that close coordination between the president and the party’s national committee helped position Democrats for success in the 2022 midterm elections. Now, they say, the staff there give their still-skeletal operation a head start for 2024.
Obama raised about $46 million for his campaign in the same fundraising period of the 2012 election cycle. But the Biden-era Democratic National Committee has been better funded and more central to early planning for his re-election campaign. .
So far, only a handful of Biden campaign staffers are on the campaign payroll, and many have been working out of the DNC offices in Washington since announcing his candidacy on April 25. The campaign hopes to open its own headquarters in Wilmington, Del., in August, as it also continues to evaluate which roles DNC staff can continue to fill versus others that require the addition of new staff.
Biden’s team had carefully managed expectations before submitting its first fundraising report. Jeffrey Katzenberg, a longtime major Democratic donor who now serves as campaign co-chairman, told NBC in May that major fundraising was not a priority in the early phase of the campaign, even as he predicted that the president “You would have all, if not more than the resources you need to run a competitive campaign.”
One of the first events Biden held after his announcement was a gathering of top Democratic donors in Washington, albeit with no price of admission. Since then, the president has held a dozen fundraisers, including five in the last four days of the fundraising quarter.
Vice President Kamala Harris has also been active on the fundraising circuit, including one she attended Thursday in New York.
