President Biden’s re-election campaign said on Monday that, along with two allied committees, it had pulled in $97 million during the most recent fund-raising period. Together, they entered 2024 with more than $117 million in cash on hand, the campaign said.
The Biden operation’s $97 million haul is significant, but its cash on hand number is just $27 million more than it had at the end of September, a function of the campaign’s significant spending on new personnel and more than $25 million in advertising it bought in general-election battlegrounds, where Mr. Biden’s poll numbers have been weak.
The Biden campaign released its fund-raising data more than two weeks before it was required to do so, a clear attempt to distract attention from the Iowa caucuses on Monday, the first nominating contest for the Republican presidential candidates aiming to oust Mr. Biden from the White House.
“The Team Biden-Harris coalition knows the stakes of this election and is ready to win this November,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager. “These numbers prove that the American people know the stakes and are taking action early to help defeat the extreme MAGA Republican agenda again.”
Former President Donald J. Trump, who has a large lead in polls of the Republican race and is widely expected to win in Iowa, has not yet released his year-end fund-raising numbers. The Trump campaign had $37.5 million in cash on hand at the end of September, the last time filings were reported, and Mr. Biden’s campaign had $32.2 million.
In January 2020, Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign committee alone had $102.8 million on hand — a function of a cash bonanza that followed his first impeachment.
Of the other top Republican candidates, only former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has revealed her end-of-year fund-raising totals. This month, she announced she had raised $24 million in the fourth quarter for her campaign and its two associated committees. The campaign said it had $14.5 million in cash to begin the new year.
The Biden campaign offered few useful details about the money it has raised. The campaign pointed to 520,000 individual donors during the three-month period that ended Dec. 31, but did not reveal how much of its money came from donors who gave less than $200, the typical measuring stick for grass-roots enthusiasm.
Small-dollar donors are vital to a campaign’s health because they can be tapped for repeated contributions, and they are a sign of grass-roots engagement with a candidate.
It is not clear yet how much of the cash raised by the Biden operation is in the campaign account that can accept contributions of $6,600 per person or other accounts to which donors can give nearly $1 million. How the money is divided won’t be known until Jan. 31, when all of the federal campaign committees are required to file fund-raising reports with the Federal Election Commission.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
