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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Kamala Harris raised four times as much as Donald Trump in July, as individual donations poured into her campaign after she replaced Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket.
Her campaign brought in $204mn last month, compared with Trump’s $48mn, according to a Financial Times analysis of federal filings. Her campaign ended July with $220mn in cash on hand, while Trump’s campaign had $151mn.
Harris’s money haul marked a stunning burst of enthusiasm for the new Democratic candidate — and means her campaign may have closed a funding gap Trump had opened over Biden, although the full picture will only emerge with more data published next month.
Her campaign also notched a record number of small donations in a single day, with 631,000 arriving on July 22, her first full day after replacing Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket. That beat the roughly 450,000 donations Trump groups received the day after his conviction in the New York hush money trial in May.
“The money that’s coming in — I have never seen that kind of money,” said Bob Mulholland, a California Democratic strategist who has worked in politics for five decades.
The FT analysis of the federal filings covers small-dollar donations to groups affiliated with the campaigns.
Data for the full third quarter covering some allied super political action committees, which have no rules limiting the size of individual donations, will be released in October. In July, the Trump-aligned super Pac Make America Great Again Inc raised $55mn, while the Harris-aligned super Pac Future Forward took in about $30mn.
Trump groups also outraised Biden in the second quarter, as deep-pocketed donors poured cash into the Republican candidate’s super Pacs.
The FT analysis also shows that the vice-president’s single-day haul from small donors last month beat Biden’s best-ever grassroots fundraising day — September 30 2020 — shortly after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and just over a month before that year’s election.
Harris is now level with Trump in many nationwide polls and ahead of him in some surveys in the swing states that will decide November’s election.
She also appears to have unlocked new donors, with 60 per cent of the 2.6mn contributions in the first 11 days of her campaign coming from people who had not given to the Biden-Harris ticket.
The Democratic candidate raised $184mn from grassroots donors through the online portal ActBlue in the 11 days, compared with $16mn raised by Biden in the 11 days before he dropped out.
Biden’s decision in July to quit the race followed weeks of pressure from party grandees after his dazed debate performance against Trump sparked renewed concerns about his age and fitness for another White House run.
“I’m too old to stay as president,” Biden said at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday. “But I hope you know how grateful I am to all of you.”
Harris, 59, will accept the nomination on Thursday, after a multi-day party celebrating her rise and potential to become America’s first woman president.
“I could not be more excited that we’re going to see our first woman president of colour,” said Janni Lehrer-Stein, a disability rights advocate, who sat in the front row of the convention on Monday to cheer Harris.
Despite the excitement over her candidacy, Democratic leaders in Chicago struck a note of caution, noting that polls show the election as a toss-up. Former president Barack Obama said in his convention speech on Tuesday night that it would be “a tight race in a closely divided country”.
Trump received a big funding boost in July from billionaire Tim Mellon, a scion of the American banking dynasty, who gave another $50mn to a pro-Trump campaign on top of the $65mn he had already given.
The White House race is expected to be the most expensive ever, with billions of dollars spent by the candidates. In 2020, Biden raised a record $1bn in donations, and Trump hauled in about $775mn, according to non-profit Open Secrets.
