President Joe Biden along with the DNC and joint fundraising committees raised a combined $72 million in the second quarter of the year, the Biden campaign announced Friday.
The Story: Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, announced in a video the re-election operation had 670,000 contributions from more than 394,000 individual donors.
- The figure provides a significant cash advantage over Biden’s potential GOP rivals as the 2024 election campaign season gets underway.
- “We’ve seen incredible enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice President Harris’ agenda — including their commitment to restoring democracy, fighting for more freedoms, and growing the economy by growing the middle class,” Rodriguez said.
- She did not mention what percentage of the money came from small donors, only sharing that 97% of the donations were less than $200.
Why it matters: Rodriguez did not mention how much of that money flowed into Biden’s campaign committee, the most important fundraising figure.
- A report from the Federal Election Commission is expected on Friday, which will be closely scrutinized by allies and rivals in both parties.
- The news comes as Democrats have quietly feared Biden nor the White House are ready for the campaign.
- “If Trump wins next November and everyone says, ‘How did that happen,’ one of the questions will be: what was the Biden campaign doing in the summer of 2023?” a former Biden 2020 campaign official told CNN.
Going deeper: Democratic donors have been anxious about Saturday’s FEC filing, given the worry about Biden’s fundraising.
- Not only has the president struggled to raise money in previous campaign runs but he declined to share how much his campaign raised in the first 24 hours of his announcement this year.
- Politico reported that some of his fundraising events struggled to sell tickets.
- Biden allies have been cautious to compare the 2024 fundraising efforts to that of Trump or Obama, which were both different cases and times.
- “Democrats are unified around his historically successful agenda,” said campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz. Put that against the MAGA Republicans seeking the presidency. The contrast speaks for itself.”
