2020
ELECTIONS
Biden cuts deep into Trump’s 2020 cash advantage
Biden, the DNC and affiliates have raised tens of
millions of dollars from a handful of donors writing big checks to beat Trump.
By ELENA
SCHNEIDER
07/16/2020
06:10 PM EDT
Joe Biden
has nearly closed the once-yawning cash gap between him and President Donald
Trump, with big donors flooding his campaign and the Democratic National
Committee with money in recent months.
Trump and
the Republican National Committee have spent years building a formidable war
chest, starting soon after he was elected and continuing as Democrats burned
money in their own primary in 2019 and early 2020. The Trump campaign and its
affiliated groups closed out June with $295 million in the bank. But Biden and
the DNC, which outraised Trump and the RNC for two consecutive months, has
rapidly cut down that advantage to just $53 million, according to Biden’s
campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon.
O’Malley
Dillon tweeted on Thursday that the campaign and its affiliates have $242
million in cash on hand, “making a $100 million dent” into Trump’s cash
advantage just in the past three months.
Throughout
the second quarter, Biden and the DNC together raised in excess of $53 million
from more than 200 donors who gave at least $100,000 apiece. The biggest donors
among them, giving at least $500,000, included philanthropist Laurene Powell
Jobs, financier George Soros, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood producer and founder
of streaming platform Quibi. More than 370 people gave at least $50,000 — a
list that includes billionaires, CEOs and top business leaders from New York to
California.
Trump’s
financial edge has been one of a few remaining advantages in a 2020 race that
has turned sharply against him, and Biden’s erosion of that edge comes at a
critical time in the election. Both campaigns are starting mega-millions TV ad
campaigns in battleground states, and Biden is quickly scaling up his campaign
staff to match Trump’s well-funded, professionalized operation.
Biden’s
gushing fundraising spigot — a sudden change from the primary, when the former
vice president typically lagged behind his Democratic rivals in cash — comes as
he enjoys a consistent lead versus Trump in a slew of national polls, some
showing him up by double-digits.
“As he goes
from a 9-point lead to 10- to 11-point lead in national polls, even people who
might not vote for him will give him money. It’s called a hedge,” said John
Morgan, a Florida-based Biden fundraiser, noting that there’s a growing sense
of “inevitability” around Biden among high-dollar givers.
Half of the
donors who gave the maximum amount to Biden and the DNC hail from Silicon
Valley, a hub of tech money that has favored Democratic candidates but viewed
some 2020 presidential contenders warily during the primary, where stricter
tech regulation was a hot topic.
“He’s
keeping the pedal to the metal on fundraising,” said former Ambassador Tod
Sedgwick, a Biden donor. “Surrogate events or events with the vice president or
with Dr. [Jill] Biden — they’re happening almost every single day.”
Biden’s
campaign has also touted its burgeoning small-dollar fundraising, a network
that’s ballooned to include 3 million unique donors, after the campaign
increased its presence with Facebook and Google ads. O’Malley Dillon wrote in a
series of tweets that last month, 97 percent of the campaign’s fundraising
“came from grassroots donors.”
But most
notably, over the past two months, Biden was able to start raising money in
tandem with the DNC after locking up the Democratic nomination, increasing the
limits that high-dollar donors can give to the campaign and party to $620,600,
according to Federal Election Commission filings. Some of that money is
restricted for use on things like legal cases, recounts or convention planning.
But all of it flows in some way into the 2020 Democratic machine.
Morgan
noted that Greg Schultz, Biden’s former campaign manager who moved over to the DNC,
is working to “help coordinate these big-dollar checks,” he said.
A number of
super PACs also filed their monthly reports on Wednesday, bolstering the
big-money Democratic armada preparing to face Trump in November.
Priorities
USA Action, the main group backing Biden’s campaign, will not file its next
financial report until Monday. But American Bridge, another anti-Trump super
PAC, raised $18 million over the last quarter. A portion of the group’s funds,
totaling $5.7 million, were channeled through a nonprofit, called the Sixteen
Thirty Fund, which is not required to disclose its donors.
The Lincoln
Project, an anti-Trump group run by Republicans, raised nearly $17 million last
quarter, a leap over its previous totals. The group has become known for its
edgy, viral videos that attack Trump, but they’re not yet a significant
presence on TV. It spent just $2.75 million on TV ads, far short of other
outside group spending.
Still, the
Lincoln Project drew several Democratic donors, including $100,000 from
Hollywood producer David Geffen and $50,000 from Ron Conway, a Silicon
Valley-based venture capitalist.
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