Kamala Harris raised four times more than Trump in July

Kamala Harris raised four times more than Donald Trump in July, with individual donations flowing to her campaign after she replaced Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket. Her campaign raised $204 million last month, compared with Trump’s $48 million, according to a Financial Times analysis of federal records. At the end of July, Harris’ campaign had $220 million in cash on hand, compared with Trump’s $151 million.

Harris’s fundraising marked a dramatic surge in enthusiasm for the new Democratic candidate, suggesting her campaign may have narrowed the financial lead Trump had built over Biden, though the full picture will only emerge when more data is released next month.

Harris’ campaign also recorded a record number of small donations in a single day, with 631,000 contributions on July 22, her first full day after replacing Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket. That number dwarfed the roughly 450,000 donations Trump’s groups received the day after his conviction in the New York hush money case in May.

“The money that’s coming in — I’ve never seen this kind of money,” said Bob Mulholland, a veteran California Democratic strategist who has been in politics for five decades.

The FT’s analysis of federal records includes small donations to groups affiliated with the campaigns. Full data for the third quarter, including some political action committees (Super PACs) that have no individual donation limits, will be released in October. In July, the Trump-aligned Super PAC Make America Great Again Inc raised $55 million, while the Harris-aligned Super PAC Future Forward raised about $30 million.

Trump groups also outperformed Biden in the second quarter, with wealthy donors pouring money into the Republican candidate’s Super PACs.

The FT analysis also reveals that Harris’s single-day fundraising haul from small donors last month surpassed Biden’s best fundraising day — September 30, 2020 — just after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and just over a month before that year’s election.

Harris is now tied with Trump in many national polls and ahead of him in some polls in the battleground states that will define the November election.

She also appears to have attracted new donors, with 60% of the 2.6 million contributions in the first 11 days of her campaign coming from people who had not previously donated to the Biden-Harris ticket.

The Democratic candidate raised $184 million from grassroots donors through the online portal ActBlue in her first 11 days, compared with $16 million raised by Biden in the 11 days before he dropped out.

Biden’s decision to drop out of the race in July followed weeks of pressure from party officials after his poor debate performance against Trump raised new concerns about his age and fitness for another White House bid.

“I’m too old to continue 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 days-long party celebrating her ascension and potential to become the first female president of the United States.

“I couldn’t be more excited that we’re going to see our first Black woman president,” said Janni Lehrer-Stein, a disability rights advocate who sat in the front row of the convention on Monday to applaud Harris.

Despite the excitement surrounding his candidacy, Democratic leaders in Chicago have taken a cautious stance, noting that polls indicate a close election. In his speech Tuesday night, Barack Obama said it will be “a close race in a deeply divided country.”

Trump also received a major financial boost in July from billionaire Tim Mellon, the scion of an American banking dynasty, who donated another $50 million to a pro-Trump campaign, on top of the $65 million he had already contributed.

The race for the White House is set to be the most expensive ever, with billions of dollars being spent by candidates. In 2020, Biden raised a record $1 billion in donations, while Trump raised about $775 million, according to the nonprofit Open Secrets.

Via Financial Times