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      Why Doug Burgum Is Staying in a Race He Can Afford to Lose

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      With a substantial personal fortune, the North Dakota governor is insistent on spreading his message despite calls to drop out.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota knows that many people, including powerful voices in his own party, think he should quit the Republican presidential primary, abandoning his quixotic bid so that momentum can gather behind a challenger to Donald J. Trump, and ultimately President Biden.“This seems like they’re trying to do the job of the voters,” he said in an interview on Saturday. But Mr. Burgum is committed to staying on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he says he regularly meets people who are eager to vote for him. “They are the ones that are going to decide how the field gets narrowed, not some other group,” he said.Mr. Burgum, 67, was sitting in a stately conference room, somewhere in the carpeted labyrinth of a convention center in Las Vegas, which was hosting a major gathering of Jewish donors. Less than an hour earlier, in a ballroom upstairs, former Vice President Mike Pence had dropped out of the race, yielding to the reality that he was short on votes and running out of money.Mr. Burgum’s reality is different in at least one critical respect: Though he is barely cracking 1 percent in Iowa polls, his net worth is in the hundreds of millions. He has largely self-financed his campaign, lending it more than $12 million — a further $3 million has come in from donations, according to the campaign’s most recent filing.He can afford to be quixotic. As of the end of September, his campaign had spent $12.9 million — more than the campaigns of Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and Mr. Pence combined. About a third of that was spent on television advertising time.He is a testament to the power of private wealth to sustain a campaign, and to elevate a largely unknown, business-minded conservative from a largely rural U.S. state to the national stage — or, at least, the edge of the stage.“I think he does bring perspective and experience that resonate with a lot of voters,” said Miles D. White, the former chairman and chief executive of Abbott Laboratories and a longtime friend of Mr. Burgum. “I think the early process doesn’t give a lot of opportunity to demonstrate that.”Mr. White, who gave $2 million to a super PAC backing Mr. Burgum, said Mr. Burgum’s financial resources meant he could stay in and raise awareness of himself as a potential alternative to Mr. Trump, outside the confines of the debate stage.“His biggest challenge is being known, nationwide, and getting known, which takes a lot of time, a lot of ads, which in turn takes a lot of funding,” Mr. White said.Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist, said that most candidates, at this point, were merely helping Mr. Trump. On Monday, in an editorial in The Bulwark, he called for all of them except Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, to drop out.“I like Burgum,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview. “He is in a desperate battle with the margin of error in the polling. Because the stakes with Trump are so high, he’s got to step back.”He added, “When your argument is, ‘Let me flame out in Iowa, where I’ll do collateral damage to others,’ you don’t have an argument.”Mr. Burgum said he first sought the governor’s seat in 2015 because he felt he could have more of an impact on North Dakota from Bismarck than he could from his perch of private enterprise. The same thing motivated him to seek the presidency — but first he had to persuade his 25-year-old son, he said, who was concerned about the attention it might bring to his family.Finally, his son told him, “You should run, because my friends would have somebody they can vote for, instead of voting against.” Telling the story, Mr. Burgum began to cry.Friends from the business community have also jumped in with support. The super PAC backing him, called Best of America, had taken in more than $11 million as of the end of June from about two dozen wealthy supporters, including people with links to his business world.“Anybody who’s donated significantly so far is someone who’s known us for a long time,” Mr. Burgum said. “Because they’re like, OK, this is the real deal.”Mr. Burgum entered the race in June on a platform that focused on his economic acumen and business record as a software executive, as well as his conservative record as governor.“People are yearning for leadership, and leadership to them does not mean a life spent as a career politician in North Dakota,” he said. “It means someone who’s got the characteristics of integrity and honesty. Someone you can trust and someone who’s willing to take risks, someone who can take a leap and not know where they’re going to land.”He added, of his competitors, “Just factually, I’ve created more jobs than everybody else on that stage combined, in the private sector.”Since entering the race, Mr. Burgum has spent heavily to introduce himself to voters and to draw support.In the early nominating states, Mr. Burgum’s business bona fides, horseback skills and distinctive eyebrows have been fixtures on television, set against the scenic backdrop of North Dakota — he said he saw his campaign in part as an opportunity to introduce his state to the rest of the country.(As for the eyebrows, Mr. Burgum credits them to his mother’s side of the family, and acknowledges the uncanny likeness to the comedian Eugene Levy. Along with his flowing mane of hair, they get a lot of attention on the campaign trail: “If the only people voting were women over 75 or 80 years old, then we’d have a lock on it,” he said.)Mr. Burgum’s campaign has bought $4.3 million of local and national advertising time, according to an analysis by AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. Since July, the super PAC backing him has bought nearly $13 million in ad time.The PAC’s ads describe him as “the only conservative business leader running for president,” promising that he can bring “small-town common sense back in Washington, D.C.”Advertising spending by the super PAC is the fifth-highest in the race, according to the AdImpact analysis, which also includes outlays for ads in the coming weeks. Never Back Down, a super PAC backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has spent $35.6 million. A super PAC for Mr. Trump has spent $27.6 million; one for Ms. Haley, $22.8 million; and one for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, $19.8 million.Before the first debate, in late August, Mr. Burgum’s campaign offered $20 gift cards to anyone who donated a dollar to his campaign so that he could meet the threshold of 40,000 individual donors to earn a spot onstage.The gambit worked. Then, the day of the debate, he ruptured his Achilles’ tendon in a game of pickup basketball with his aides. He showed up anyway. Two months later, he still uses a knee scooter to move around.A major hurdle lies ahead: While Mr. Burgum’s campaign has the requisite number of donors, it has not yet met the Republican National Committee’s polling threshold for the third G.O.P. debate, next week in Miami.He described the threshold as an arbitrary bar set by the party leadership. “It might achieve a winnowing, but it may not produce what Iowa or New Hampshire would produce, where people are actually investing time,” he said. More

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      Some Republicans Worry Mike Johnson Can’t Match Kevin McCarthy’s Fund-Raising Prowess

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      The former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was a prolific fund-raiser for his House colleagues. The new speaker, Mike Johnson, doesn’t yet have the same juice.The decision to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker and replace him with a little-known congressman, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has left a glaring financial gap for House Republicans headed into 2024 when the party has to defend its narrow and fragile majority.Mr. McCarthy’s political operation brought in more than 100 times the amount of money that Mr. Johnson has collected so far in 2023 — $78 million to roughly $608,000, according to federal records and public disclosures. And in Mr. Johnson’s entire congressional career, dating to his first run in 2016, the Louisiana Republican has raised a total of $6.1 million — less than Mr. McCarthy’s average monthly take this year.The willingness of House Republicans to trade a party rainmaker for a member who has raised less than some more junior colleagues has caused a deep sense of uncertainty at the highest levels of the conference, even as relieved lawmakers united behind Mr. Johnson to end weeks of political paralysis.“Mike Johnson is not known to be a prolific fund-raiser. He’s raised money to meet his needs in a noncompetitive seat in Louisiana,” said Tom Reynolds, a former New York congressman and past chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “It remains to be seen: Can he raise money to help the members when it comes time next year?”In the days since he took the gavel, Mr. Johnson called Dan Conston, the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main House Republican super PAC, and is expected to play a significant role in that group’s fund-raising going forward. And in a sign of the urgency of the political task ahead — in addition to governing — Mr. Johnson, in a meeting first reported by Punchbowl News, visited the headquarters of the National Republican Congressional Committee within hours of his swearing-in on Wednesday.Mr. Johnson has large financial shoes to fill.Mr. McCarthy has been directly responsible for 10 to 25 percent of all the campaign money raised this year by almost all of the House’s most vulnerable Republicans, according to an analysis of federal records.Mr. McCarthy’s transfers to the party’s House campaign committee amount to more than 25 percent of the $70.1 million raised this year. Then there are the hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. McCarthy has helped raise in recent years for the House G.O.P.’s main super PAC, which has been closely aligned with him.In a brief interview Friday, Mr. McCarthy pledged to “help the party to bridge the gap” in the coming weeks and months as the new speaker takes over, though it is not yet clear if he will keep up the dizzying pace of travel that his team said had taken him to 22 states and 85 cities this year.“I helped build the majority, and I’m not going to walk away from it,” Mr. McCarthy said.One person who has been in touch with the new speaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation, said Mr. Johnson understood the weight of his new responsibility, not just legislatively but also politically.Adding to the sense of uncertainty among top Republicans is how Mr. Johnson’s hard-line positions on social issues — his opposition to gay marriage and strict anti-abortion stance — will play with some of the party’s key financiers, who tend to be more moderate than the party base.Representative Mike Johnson won the votes of his caucus. Now he’ll have to deliver on the fund-raising front.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesAllies of Mr. Johnson predicted he would quickly take to the money circuit. To some extent, the perpetual money machine that is modern Washington has already begun to adjust to the new Republican order.“The event we do for him will probably be the easiest money I’ve raised all cycle,” said Susan Hirschmann, a Republican lobbyist who leads the firm Williams & Jensen and is already organizing a fund-raiser. “I can tell you my phone has been ringing off the hook with people wanting to help raise money for Speaker Johnson.”Brian Ballard, who runs another major lobbying firm, said that the new speaker’s team had already reached out and they were now organizing an event this fall. “The world turns, and that role requires him to take that on,” Mr. Ballard said. “My clients are very excited to work with him. It’s seamless as far as I’m concerned.”Still, it is not just the prodigious nature of Mr. McCarthy’s fund-raising but also the specific methods he used to raise and distribute money that make his efforts hard to replicate. His political operation built the war chests of his party’s most vulnerable incumbents — a hole that the new speaker is unlikely to be able to fill in the months leading up to next year’s crucial elections.Federal records show that for 21 of the 24 most vulnerable Republican incumbents, Mr. McCarthy was directly responsible for at least 10 percent of their fund-raising in the first nine months of 2023. That is an unusually significant share to have come from a single source, and Mr. McCarthy did so by bundling large numbers of contributions before distributing them to his colleagues.For some members, the McCarthy share was closer to 25 percent of what they raised.Representative Brandon Williams of New York has received about $336,000 from Mr. McCarthy-linked committees this year — roughly one-quarter of the $1.3 million he has raised. Representative John Duarte of California, who won one of the nation’s narrowest contests in 2022, has received roughly $402,000 from the former speaker’s operation — more than 23 percent of the $1.7 million he has raised.The McCarthy team had intended to soon pivot to similarly fill the coffers of the Republican challengers running against Democratic incumbents, according to three people familiar with the plans, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for Mr. McCarthy’s political operation, but the future of those efforts is now unclear.Even with Mr. McCarthy’s efforts, the National Republican Congressional Committee has trailed its Democratic counterpart in fund-raising this year, $70.1 million to $93.2 million, and entered October with about $8 million less in the bank.“Clearly Republicans were extremely dependent on Kevin McCarthy for their fund-raising,” said Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “This does put them in a very difficult position.”Mr. McCarthy spent more than a decade carefully tending to donor relationships as he rose through the ranks of the House. Mr. Johnson is entering the speakership with neither a significant large donor network nor a devoted grass-roots following. His campaign account had brought in less than $300,000 in donations of less than $200 in his congressional career.And while he served as the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, an internal House conservative caucus, he has not been a fixture on the Washington fund-raising circuit and has not chaired a standing committee.Jeff Brooks, a partner at the lobbying firm Adams and Reese who knows Mr. Johnson, said that “he’s got the personality” to succeed. “There is going to be a gap, no question,” he said of replacing Mr. McCarthy’s money. “But Mike is going to close it quickly.”Mr. Johnson’s office declined to comment.For now, Representative Steve Scalise, the majority leader and a fellow Louisiana Republican, is expected to help Mr. Johnson as he builds out his operation.“When someone like Mike gets into this very important role, very suddenly I think it’s fair to say — obviously a person in that position needs to be careful about who’s really loyal and committed to him versus being opportunist,” said David Vitter, a former senator from Louisiana and now a lobbyist who has known Mr. Johnson for years. “I know Mike trusts Steve and Steve’s team in general.”Some in Washington have scoffed that one of Mr. McCarthy’s top money men, Jeff Miller, a lobbyist who has been a prolific fund-raiser for years, said in Politico that he would help Mr. Johnson.“Very selfless of him,” Mr. Vitter said with a laugh. 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      DeSantis Campaign Offloads Costs for Private Flights to Super PAC

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      The Florida governor’s campaign, facing a cash crunch, has found a way to offload the steep costs of private air travel. Campaign finance experts say the arrangement could test the limits of the law.Short on cash, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign has found an unusual way to pay for his habit of flying in private planes: passing the cost to the better-funded super PAC that is increasingly intertwined with his operation.The practice, described by three people who spoke about the arrangement on the condition of anonymity, appears to have cut the campaign’s travel bills by hundreds of thousands of dollars in September alone. It could test the limits of campaign finance laws, experts said.“This is old news, and it’s entirely appropriate for N.B.D. to be covering the costs of their events,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, using shorthand for the super PAC, Never Back Down. “The campaign is firing on all cylinders, and as we see a considerable uptick in fund-raising, we are continuing to identify cost savings, run an efficient operation, and focus resources on Iowa and the early states.”Asked on Friday about the flights as he visited a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Murrells Inlet, S.C., Mr. DeSantis said, “Everything is checked by lawyers,” adding, “I don’t move without lawyers signing off.”Never Back Down pays for Mr. DeSantis’s travel only on days when the events he is attending are hosted solely by the group, the people familiar with the arrangement said. The super PAC now hosts many of his events in early primary states.A representative for Never Back Down declined to comment on the arrangement.Federal candidates can appear as “featured guests” of super PACs, but whether a super PAC can also pay for transportation is less clear cut. Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with campaigns, and campaign finance experts say that Mr. DeSantis’s arrangement — in which he is campaigning for president as a guest of a super PAC — could test that rule.“I think what DeSantis is currently doing is an abuse of this law to benefit his candidacy — paid for by his super PAC and its special-interest donors,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer and the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center.The Campaign Legal Center filed an ethics complaint in July with Florida officials against Mr. DeSantis for failing to disclose gifts of plane travel — made before he formally declared his candidacy for president — that was arranged by a nonprofit group, an arrangement described by The New York Times in May.Aside from comfort, private air travel can be a tremendous help to candidates as they move quickly from state to state in the thick of primary season. Many of the other Republican presidential candidates have often flown commercial, including Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has taken jabs at Mr. DeSantis for his well-known preference for flying private.The travel expenses for Mr. DeSantis’s campaign have previously drawn scrutiny.In July, his campaign’s first report showed that he had spent $179,000 on chartered planes, as well as $483,000 to a limited liability company for “travel.” Never Back Down paid that same company $343,000 in June.In August, The Washington Post reported that Never Back Down and the campaign had become joint investors in a private transportation management company that provided lower-cost airplane rental leases for Mr. DeSantis, citing people familiar with the deal. The Post reported that Mr. DeSantis had used planes from the company in July; in its October filing, the campaign lists the last payment to the company, Empyreal Jets, as $41,433 on August 10.A shrinking campaignCampaign finance filings show just how much Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has transformed since late July, when sagging poll numbers and astronomical spending forced him to pare back his operation and reboot his bid for the White House.Mr. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019, began his run for president in May campaigning as a front-runner, with money to burn. With a large entourage in tow, he traveled to big venues, delivering his stump speech in highly stage-managed appearances; he kept the news media at arm’s length and spent millions on consultants.In July, records show, the campaign spent $5.5 million. Bills that month included nearly $1 million for travel, including hundreds of thousands to jet rental companies; $1.8 million to consultants specializing in areas like survey research, media and fund-raising; and $828,000 in payroll expenses.Then came the financial report for the second quarter of 2023, which revealed an unsustainable level of spending. At the end of July, Mr. DeSantis cut more than a third of his staff, hired a new campaign manager and handed over most of his event planning to Never Back Down, which was already managing operations traditionally handled by a campaign, like field work.By the end of September, he was running like an insurgent: leaner, more accessible and much less expensive.The campaign spent 75 percent less in September than it did in July, the records show, even as Mr. DeSantis toured Iowa, traveled to New York and Texas for donor events, and delivered speeches in California and Washington, D.C. Travel costs plummeted to $130,000 in September from about $1 million in both July and August.The campaign’s top expenses in September were relatively modest: $100,000 for media placement, $70,000 for postage, $70,000 for digital fund-raising consulting. Payroll costs fell to $532,000.The downsizing was in part strategic, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his surrogates have said, positioning him as a nimbler, scrappier presence on the trail. They say it has been a success, allowing Mr. DeSantis to engage with voters directly and saving campaign funds.Lingering cash problemsBut Mr. DeSantis’s financial situation remains strained. Averaged over the entire quarter, the campaign spent 99 cents of every dollar it brought in, a worrisome burn rate. The campaign entered October with only $5 million in cash on hand for the primary election, and $1 million in debts, which appear to be unpaid bills.His fund-raising from July through September declined by about 25 percent from the previous quarter.More than 80 percent of all the money Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has raised since entering the race in May has come from people who have given more than $200, and at least two-thirds came from people who have given at least the maximum $3,300 allowed for the primary, a greater share than any other Republican candidate, the filings show.This is a sign of enthusiasm for Mr. DeSantis among large donors, but it suggests a weakness among smaller donors. While it is impossible to say how many individual small donors he has — his campaign has an arrangement that prevents the disclosure of donors of less than $200 in official records — such donors are critical to the long-term success of a campaign, since they can be tapped for repeated contributions, and can be an indicator of broader enthusiasm for a candidate.The campaign’s Oct. 15 filing does not provide a full picture of its financial health. Some of the campaign’s expenses may not have appeared, because campaigns sometimes defer paying bills until after the quarter is over.And some larger expenses have been shifted over to Never Back Down, which for months has been acting as a shadow campaign operation. In July, the campaign said Mr. DeSantis would shift focus to smaller, intimate events, and would rely on invitations from outside organizations rather than hosting events itself.Shifting the strategyMr. DeSantis is now running the type of campaign befitting a candidate low on cash, who is trailing the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, in national polls by more than 40 percentage points, and has lost ground to other candidates who are raising — and saving — money faster.In Iowa this month, after a full day of campaigning, Mr. DeSantis stopped at a small diner in Fort Madison to meet a group of roughly two dozen voters, patiently taking their questions in an impromptu question-and-answer session outside.In New Hampshire, he gabbed with clusters of voters at gas stations and convenience stores in the state’s remote North Country. It was a shoestring approach that felt worlds removed from a campaign that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in May to court donors at the Four Seasons in Miami.Mr. DeSantis has also significantly adjusted his press strategy, becoming a constant presence in the mainstream news media and regularly taking questions in person from reporters.His newfound accessibility has earned him reams of free media, even if it means he now must take tougher questions.Some questions, though, can be deferred — like details about who is covering his flights. His campaign, the super PAC and other committees supporting him do not have to file financial reports again until Jan. 31, after the first nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.Rachel Shorey More

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      Tim Scott’s Super PAC Cancels Fall TV Ad Buys

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      In a memo, the super PAC told donors that it was not going to “waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative.”The main super PAC supporting Senator Tim Scott’s presidential campaign abruptly announced to donors in a memo that it was canceling millions of dollars in television ads it had reserved this fall, writing that Donald J. Trump’s strength was so ingrained among Republican voters that additional advertising would currently make little difference.“We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” Rob Collins, a Republican strategist who is a co-chairman of the super PAC, wrote in the blunt memo to donors that was circulated on Monday. “We have done the research. We have studied the focus groups. We have been following Tim on the trail. This electorate is locked up and money spent on mass media isn’t going to change minds until we get a lot closer to voting.”A copy of the memo was obtained by The New York Times.The super PAC, called the Trust in Mission PAC, or TIMPAC, has been one of the largest advertisers in the race, spending roughly $5 million in Iowa alone this year. Mr. Scott’s poll numbers have hardly budged, however, and Mr. Trump remains far ahead.In addition to the super PAC, Mr. Scott’s campaign had also spent aggressively on television advertising, spending more than $12.5 million on ads to run through the end of November, the campaign said. That total far eclipses any other campaign, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. It’s not clear exactly how much the super PAC is canceling, though it could be $15 million or more. The group, according to data from AdImpact, has roughly $10 million reserved in just the next six weeks.“We are doing what would be obvious in the business world but will mystify politicos,” Mr. Collins wrote in the memo.The super PAC is likely to begin paying for some of Mr. Scott’s events as part of a move that was described as shifting resources elsewhere.The decision to cancel the ads and begin paying for some of Mr. Scott’s events comes a day after Mr. Scott revealed the deteriorating state of his campaign’s finances, which showed swelling spending and shrinking receipts.Mr. Scott had a robust $13.3 million cash on hand — including $11.6 million that can be used for the primary — but he raised only $4.6 million in the third quarter, down from $5.9 million the previous quarter. In the most recent period, Mr. Scott raised only a fraction of what former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pulled in, and roughly one-tenth of Mr. Trump’s haul.He was even topped by Vivek Ramaswamy, who raised $7.4 million in the third quarter, about a third of which came from donors who gave less than $200.Mr. Scott’s campaign has been spending freely. When Mr. Scott entered the race in May, he brought with him $22 million left over from his last Senate re-election — and he has been steadily burning through that stockpile. In July alone, the campaign spent $5.4 million. In contrast, Ms. Haley’s campaign spent $3.5 million in the entire third quarter.Mr. Scott’s super PAC had entered July with only $15 million in cash on hand yet it soon made $40 million in television and digital reservations.That gap raised questions about how the super PAC had secured so much money so quickly. At the center of those questions is Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who previously had been one of Mr. Scott’s biggest benefactors but had not yet been among those donors who had given to the super PAC in the first half of the year. The canceled ads are likely to raise more questions about what financial role Mr. Ellison is playing.The super PAC said it would continue to spend on door-knocking programs, raising money online for Mr. Scott and holding events. The group claimed it was not giving up on the campaign entirely. Mr. Collins argued that Mr. Scott remained the “best fit” for Iowa voters and that for other campaigns and super PACs that fill the breach, “money will simply be wasted.” He wrote in the memo that two-thirds of Iowa caucusgoers will decide in the last six weeks before the caucus on Jan. 15, 2024 — not in the next six weeks.Regardless of the rationale, the decision will be seen in political circles as all but abandoning Mr. Scott.“Some will challenge our theory of the election,” Mr. Collins wrote, “but we would ask these critics to produce any evidence that shows any candidate, at this time, at any spending level, breaking through.”Matt Gorman, a spokesman for Mr. Scott, said in a statement that Mr. Scott’s campaign remained “built for the long haul — powered by the most primary cash on hand and the highest candidate favorability of anyone in the field.”He added, “On issues ranging from foreign policy to abortion, he has been the clearest and strongest voice, leading while others have followed.” More

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      Trump’s Giant Lead Is Financial, Too: 6 Takeaways From 2024 Filings

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      Ron DeSantis has spent heavily and Nikki Haley has padded her war chest. On the Democratic side, President Biden continues to show overall strength, and the party’s incumbent senators fared well.Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign entered October with nearly as much cash on hand for the Republican primary race as the rest of the field combined, underscoring the former president’s dominance as the contest enters its critical final stretch before the Iowa caucuses in January.The financial picture, laid out in quarterly fund-raising and spending reports filed by campaigns on Sunday, shows just how uphill Mr. Trump’s challengers are fighting, with some of them appearing to hemorrhage cash. Still, others showed signs of momentum. More

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      Biden Campaign Raises $71.3 Million in Third Quarter Alongside D.N.C.

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      The president’s re-election campaign announced a substantial quarterly fund-raising haul, but it’s far short of what Donald J. Trump raised in the same quarter of his 2020 re-election campaign.President Biden’s re-election campaign announced on Sunday it had raised a combined $71.3 million alongside the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee during the three-month period that ended in September, a haul that eclipses what his Republican rivals have amassed but falls short of where President Donald J. Trump was at this point four years ago.The campaign said the three fund-raising vehicles had a combined $90.5 million in cash on hand. It did not disclose how the cash was divided between the three fund-raising vehicles.“It was a spectacular quarter,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul whom Mr. Biden named a co-chairman of his campaign, said in an interview Saturday. “It certainly exceeded our own expectations around it significantly. The fact that we’re sitting with $91 million in the bank today is really an extraordinary advantage.”But Mr. Biden’s fund-raising haul is well short of the $125 million Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee raised during the same period of his 2020 re-election campaign. And it is just a touch more than the $70.1 million President Obama and the D.N.C. raised at this point in his 2012 campaign — at a time when individual contribution limits were far lower than they are today.Mr. Katzenberg, in the interview, dismissed comparisons to such campaigns as “comparing apples to submarines.”Comparisons with Mr. Obama’s fund-raising efforts for the 2012 campaign are indeed imprecise, because a 2014 Supreme Court decision and other legal changes now allow candidates and parties to form joint fund-raising committees that can accept single donations of nearly $1 million. In 2012, Mr. Obama and the D.N.C. could collect only $30,500 per person.More revealing details about the Biden campaign’s financial status will emerge when the committees file quarterly reports required by the Federal Election Commission. Those are due by the end of Sunday; a campaign official said the reports would become public late Sunday evening.Among the most significant details in the campaign’s fund-raising report will be the amount of cash it has accumulated from donors who gave less than $200.These so-called small donors are vital to presidential efforts because they can be recruited to give again and again over the course of a long campaign. During the three-month fund-raising period that ended in June, $10.2 million of contributions to the Biden effort, or about 21 percent, came from small donors, an amount smaller in percentage and in real dollars than the Trump and Obama campaigns in the comparable time periods.While the Biden campaign has not disclosed how much of its haul came from small donors, an official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the campaign, did reveal that 49 percent of its $71.3 million came from donors who gave through the internet or mail programs. The campaign had expected that about 36 to 37 percent of third-quarter fund-raising would come online or through the mail.Mr. Biden’s fund-raising total far outpaces what his Republican rivals have reported for the third quarter.Mr. Trump’s campaign reported it raised $45.5 million, with $37.5 million in cash on hand. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida raised $15 million. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, raised $11 million. Aides to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina revealed to Republican donors this week that his campaign began October with $11.6 million in cash on hand, more than either Mr. DeSantis or Ms. Haley.The Biden campaign trumpeted an array of fund-raising figures that officials said proved that there was indeed enthusiasm for their candidate, even as polls show that Mr. Biden is unpopular and suggest that he has not engendered enthusiasm within his own party.The campaign said that it attracted 240,000 donors who had contributed to the campaign in 2020 and that 97 percent of contributions were less than $200. A contest for a chance to meet both Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama raised “nearly $2.5 million,” according to the campaign, while the sales of mugs with a picture of Mr. Biden’s face with the “Dark Brandon” meme brought in “close to $2 million” in August and September. More

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      Haley Slams Trump and Ramaswamy Over Israel Remarks

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      Nikki Haley on Friday knocked two of her Republican presidential rivals, Donald J. Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, over their recent comments on Israel, underscoring the deepening divide within the party around the “America First” anti-interventionist stance that Mr. Trump made a core part of his first campaign.Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley suggested, lacks moral clarity and has not left “the baggage and negativity” of the past behind, an apparent reference to Mr. Trump’s still-simmering animosity toward Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over events that include his congratulating President Biden on winning the 2020 election. Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, sounds more like a liberal Democrat than a Republican, Ms. Haley said.“To go and criticize the head of a country who just saw massive bloodshed — no, that’s not what we need in a president,” Ms. Haley said of Mr. Trump, the former president and current Republican front-runner, in a news conference in Concord, N.H., after filing to get on the state’s primary ballot.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump who has been running on her foreign policy experience, said the next president of the United States needed to be someone who “knows the difference between good and evil, who knows the difference between right and wrong.”“You don’t congratulate or give any credit to murderers, period,” she said. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, accused Ms. Haley of using Democratic talking points and said that “there has been no bigger defender and advocate for Israel than President Trump.” But Mr. Trump has drawn scorn from both sides of the political aisle for referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart” while criticizing Israel’s prime minister and Israeli intelligence.His tone shifted on Friday, though, as he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he had “always been impressed by the skill and determination of the Israeli Defense Forces.” A second post said simply: “#IStandWithIsrael #IStandWithBibi.”Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Ramaswamy campaign, dismissed Ms. Haley’s remarks on Friday — including Ms. Haley’s accusation that he sounded like a member of the group of progressives known as “the squad” — as a scripted attack from a candidate whom Ms. McLaughlin sought to portray as beholden to special interests.“Pre-canned quip brought to you by the Boeing squad,” she said in an email, invoking Ms. Haley’s tenure of less than a year on the corporate board of Boeing.Ms. Haley’s dig at Mr. Ramaswamy on Friday escalated an ongoing feud between the G.O.P. rivals that has pitted those with more traditional conservative positions, who believe the United States should play a major role abroad, against those espousing anti-interventionist views, who want Americans to focus on issues at home.Mr. Ramaswamy was sharply rebuked by his opponents over his conversation with Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this week.He called the Republican response to Hamas’s attacks on Israel another example of “selective moral outrage” and argued that politicians on both sides of the aisle had largely ignored other atrocities, citing fentanyl deaths in the United States and the accusations of genocide of ethnic Armenians by Azerbaijan.“It comes down in most cases — some people do have ideological commitments that are outdated that are earnest — but a lot of it comes down to money, the corrupting influence of super PACs on the process,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.In a statement on Friday, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, another Republican candidate in the race, condemned Mr. Ramaswamy’s remarks, saying that he was “pulling out the oldest and most offensive antisemitic tropes possible.”He added: “To say that outrage is fueled by donor money and the media is beyond offensive. It is morally wrong and it is dangerous.”Mr. Ramaswamy accused critics and even conservative media outlets of taking his words out of context. Ms. McLaughlin, his campaign spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday that he was talking about Azerbaijan, not Israel.But Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator, was not persuaded. In a tense exchange between the two men on Thursday night, Mr. Hannity said that Mr. Ramaswamy had a history of retreating from his incendiary statements and had made wild claims without backing them up.“What are the financial corrupting influences that Nikki Haley is taking a position on?” he said. “We’ve got pictures of dead babies decapitated, burned babies’ bodies. We’ve got the equivalent of what would be, population-wise in the U.S., over 37,000 dead Americans. So, how much more evidence do you need? What are you talking about?”Mr. Trump, during his time in the White House, virtually did not challenge Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.As his United Nations ambassador, Ms. Haley forcefully spoke out in support of the president’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as his decision to cut American funding to Palestinian refugees. She has since made her foreign policy credentials and staunch support for Israel pillars of her campaign. Her sparring with Mr. Ramaswamy over foreign policy on the national debate stage in particular helped to boost her in the polls, propelling her to the second position behind Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.On the trail and on the Republican media circuit this week, Ms. Haley has been talking up her on-the-ground experience in the Middle East and calling for the elimination of Hamas. In town halls in New Hampshire on Thursday, she ratcheted up her criticism of Mr. Trump for his reaction to the Israel-Hamas war, saying the former president was too focused on himself.In a small room crowded with reporters at the New Hampshire State House on Friday, Ms. Haley again pitched herself as “a new generational conservative leader” who knew how to negotiate with world leaders.“I know what it takes to keep Americans safe,” she said. She later added: “You don’t just have Israel’s back when they get hit. You need to have Israel’s back when they hit back, too.” More

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      The Spoiler Threat of R.F.K. Jr.

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      Mary Wilson, Stella Tan and Rachel Quester and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicRobert F. Kennedy Jr. was once dismissed as a fringe figure in the 2024 presidential race. But this week, as he announces an independent run for the White House, he’s striking fear within both the Democratic and Republican parties.Rebecca Davis O’Brien, who covers campaign finance for The Times, explains why.On today’s episodeRebecca Davis O’Brien, a reporter covering campaign finance and money in U.S. elections for The New York Times.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories, has said he represents “a populist movement that defies left-right division.”Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesBackground readingRobert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters he would end his campaign as a Democratic candidate and run as an independent, potentially upsetting the dynamics of the 2024 election.From July, five noteworthy falsehoods Mr. Kennedy has promoted.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Rebecca Davis O’Brien More