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      DeSantis’s Campaign Reboot Faces Donor Skepticism and Deepening Divisions

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      As the Florida governor reboots in Iowa, tensions still plague the highest levels of his operation and a supportive super PAC.On the day his presidential campaign said it had laid off more than a third of its staff to address worries about unsustainable spending, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida began his morning by boarding a private jet to Chattanooga, Tenn.The choice was a routine one — Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, haven’t regularly flown commercial for years — but also symbolic to close observers of his struggling presidential campaign. As Mr. DeSantis promises a reset, setting out on Thursday on a bus tour in Iowa to show off a leaner, hungrier operation, several donors and allies remained skeptical about whether the governor could right the ship.Their bleak outlook reflects a deep mistrust plaguing the highest levels of the DeSantis campaign, as well as its supporters and the well-funded super PAC, Never Back Down, bolstering his presidential ambitions.Publicly, the parties are projecting a stoic sunniness about Mr. DeSantis, even as he has sunk dangerously close to third place in some recent polls. They have said they are moving into an “insurgent” phase in which the candidate will be everywhere — on national and local media, and especially in Iowa.But privately, the situation is starkly different.Major Republican donors, including the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, have remained on the sidelines because they are disappointed in his performance and his campaign, according to two people familiar with their thinking.DeSantis donors have specifically raised concerns about the campaign’s finances, which appear both troubling and persistently opaque. Some prominent vendors did not show up on the first Federal Election Commission report, raising questions about how much of the spending has been deferred and whether the campaign’s total reported cash on hand for the primary — $9.2 million — was even close to accurate.The campaign’s concerning financial situation prompted an all-hands review of the budget in recent weeks. This review extended to James Uthmeier, the chief of staff in the governor’s office and a longtime trusted aide. Mr. Uthmeier recently received a personal briefing on the campaign’s finances from an official, Ethan Eilon, with the blessing of campaign manager Generra Peck, and then delivered an assessment to the governor, according to two people briefed on the conversations.Asked about the briefing, Mr. Uthmeier responded by email to express strong confidence in Ms. Peck, who he said had “welcomed” him to help the campaign as a volunteer. He added that Mr. DeSantis “continues to receive support from tens of thousands” of donors and that he has “full confidence” in Mr. DeSantis’s “vision to beat Joe Biden and restore sanity.”In an attempt to assuage donors’ anxieties, Mr. DeSantis’s allies have promised a campaign pivot that includes a more open press strategy, humbler travel conditions and smaller events. Advisers say the governor will be promoting his vision for a “Great American Comeback” — a phrase they hope will also apply to his spiraling campaign. Mr. DeSantis, a big-state governor with little love for glad-handing, will have to prove he is up for the challenges.On Thursday, Mr. DeSantis began a two-day bus tour across central Iowa that is being organized almost entirely by the super PAC, Never Back Down. Announcements for the three meet-and-greet stops scheduled describe Mr. DeSantis as the “special guest.”In talking points provided to donors on the day of the layoffs, the campaign described the operation as “leaning into the reset.”“We will embrace being the underdog and use the media’s ongoing narrative about the campaign to fuel momentum on the ground with voters,” said the guidance.On Tuesday, the campaign confirmed it had fired 38 campaign officials this month in an attempt to shrink its payroll. It remains unclear how many of those are leaving the DeSantis orbit. Some have discussed joining nonprofit groups with close ties to Mr. DeSantis’s political operation, including one linked to Phil Cox, who was an adviser on the governor’s 2022 campaign.Among the known DeSantis vendors that did not show up on his first campaign filing are some companies — Ascent Media and Public Opinion Strategies — that are part of a consultancy umbrella group called GP3, in which Mr. Cox is a key financial partner. Mr. Cox, who has worked closely with some of the 2024 campaign leadership in the past and also spent a brief stint advising the super PAC, is now back informally involved with the DeSantis campaign and raising money.But Mr. DeSantis himself has yet to adopt his campaign’s newfound frugality. On Tuesday, he flew multiple trips on private planes to fund-raisers around Tennessee. The private flights help explain part of how the campaign has burned through cash in its first six weeks. His campaign’s first report showed that he had spent $179,000 in chartered plane costs, as well as $483,000 to a limited liability company for “travel.”On Thursday outside a small meat-processing facility in Lamoni, Iowa, Mr. DeSantis briefly addressed his use of private planes in response to a question from a reporter.“We do things based on R.O.I. and that’s on everything you do,” Mr. DeSantis said, using the acronym for “return on investment,” a business term. “If it’s not a good R.O.I., then we try something else.” He did not answer later when asked what return he was getting on flying private instead of commercial, as other candidates in the race are doing.Some of Mr. DeSantis’s rivals have been eager to point out their cost-saving measures. On Wednesday, Nikki Haley tweeted a photo with her flight attendant under the hashtag #WeFlyCommercial.What’s more, Mr. DeSantis and other parts of his operation showed little sign of a message shift.In an interview with the radio host Clay Travis that aired Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis said that he would consider picking Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine candidate running as a Democrat, to work at the F.D.A. or the C.D.C. The stunning remark prompted criticism from some prominent conservative writers, including at The National Review, where staff had once sounded bullish on a DeSantis candidacy.Later in the day, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign aide Christina Pushaw, who is known for fighting with reporters online, attacked the popular Republican Florida Representative Byron Donalds, who is Black, for criticizing his state’s new required teachings on slavery. By night’s end, the feud over Mr. Donalds devolved to the point where another DeSantis aide, Jeremy Redfern, got into a fight with a random Twitter user and posted her photo prominently in a tweet.At a donor retreat over the weekend — at a luxury ski resort in Park City, Utah, hired out for $87,000 — donors and allies, including Representative Chip Roy of Texas, had tough conversations with both the governor and his wife, a close adviser, about the structure and management of the campaign, according to two people who attended the retreat.Asked whether the congressman voiced concerns to Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Roy issued a statement saying only, “It’s not the campaign that needs to change; it’s the direction of our country. Governor DeSantis and his whole team are committed to doing just that.” His spokesman did not respond to a follow-up question.Much of the rancor stems from the strained but increasingly intertwined relationship between Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his super PAC. Having raised $130 million, the super PAC has vastly more money than the campaign and has taken over basic campaign functions, including its voter contact operation — a highly unusual extent of involvement.The two entities — essentially a traditional campaign and a shadow one — are prohibited from coordinating strategy in private, but the campaign has aired its differences through a leaked memo. Ms. Peck, the campaign manager who has a close relationship with the governor and his wife, recently sent a memo to donors that appeared to call into question the super PAC’s decision to save money by staying off the airwaves in New Hampshire. The super PAC has since reserved airtime in the state, with advertising set to begin next week.Ms. Peck also has harshly criticized Never Back Down in private, according to a person with direct knowledge of her remarks.In response to questions about the distrust across the DeSantis orbit, the campaign’s communications director, Andrew Romeo, dismissed “palace intrigue.”“Our campaign is laser-focused on electing Ron DeSantis president, and we are nothing but grateful for groups like Never Back Down that are also working to support this mission,” he said.Erin Perrine, a spokeswoman for Never Back Down, declined to comment.On Tuesday night, only hours after the announcement of the layoffs, Mr. DeSantis returned to Tallahassee on a private plane.Back at his campaign headquarters, some staff members who hadn’t been fired brought in cases of beer to rally spirits after yet another dispiriting day. One staffer sarcastically described the evening to a friend as “the survivors party.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      A ‘Leaner-Meaner’ DeSantis Campaign Faces a Reboot and a Reckoning

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      The campaign’s missteps and swelling costs have made donors and allies anxious. One person close to the Florida governor said he had experienced a “challenging learning curve.”Throughout the spring, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and his advisers waved off his sagging poll numbers with the simple fact that he wasn’t yet an actual candidate for president.Two months in, however, his sputtering presidential campaign is still struggling to gain traction.Allies are complaining about a lack of a coherent message about why Republican voters should choose Mr. DeSantis over former President Donald J. Trump. Early strategic fissures have emerged between his own political team and the enormous super PAC that will spend tens of millions of dollars to help him. His Tallahassee-based campaign has begun shedding some of the more than 90 workers it had hired — roughly double the Trump campaign payroll — to cut swelling costs that have included $279,000 at the Four Seasons in Miami.Now, his advisers are promising to reorient the DeSantis candidacy as an “insurgent” run and remake it into a “leaner-meaner” operation, days after the first public glimpse into his political finances showed unsustainable levels of spending — including a taste for private planes — and a fund-raising operation that was alarmingly dependent on its biggest contributors and that did not meet its expectations.One recent move that drew intense blowback, including from Republicans, was the campaign’s sharing of a bizarre video on Twitter that attacked Mr. Trump as too friendly to L.G.B.T.Q. people and showed Mr. DeSantis with lasers coming out of his eyes. The video drew a range of denunciations, with some calling it homophobic and others homoerotic before it was deleted.But it turns out to be more of a self-inflicted wound than was previously known: A DeSantis campaign aide had originally produced the video internally, passing it off to an outside supporter to post it first and making it appear as if it was generated independently, according to a person with knowledge of the incident.Mr. DeSantis has privately forecast that the now twice-indicted Mr. Trump would struggle as his legal troubles mounted, but the governor continues to poll in a distant second place nationally.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe DeSantis campaign declined to comment on specific questions about its spending, the candidate’s travel and the video. The communications director, Andrew Romeo, said in a statement that Mr. DeSantis was “ready to prove the doubters wrong again and our campaign is prepared to execute on his vision for the Great American Comeback.”“The media and D.C. elites have already picked their candidates — Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” Mr. Romeo said. “Ron DeSantis has never been the favorite or the darling of the establishment, and he has won because of it every time.”Second-guessing from political donors has intensified as Mr. DeSantis traveled this week from the Hamptons to Park City, Utah, to see donors. Records show the DeSantis campaign made an $87,000 reservation at the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Utah for a retreat where donors were invited to cocktails on the deck on Saturday followed by an “investor appreciation dinner.” It’s the type of luxury location that helps explain how a candidate who has long preferred to fly by private jets burned through nearly 40 percent of every dollar he raised in his first six weeks without airing a single television ad.One senior DeSantis adviser who was supposed to oversee the campaign’s messaging on television recently departed, as the reality of a disappearing advertising budget set in. Now the governor is expected to hold smaller-scale events in early states while outsourcing some event planning to outside groups to tamp down costs. His team, for the second time in three months, is telegraphing a plan to engage more with the mainstream media he has long derided, calling it the “DeSantis is everywhere” approach.DeSantis supporters have watched anxiously as Mr. Trump has swamped the governor in coverage and outmaneuvered him in defining the contours of the race. Since his entry, Mr. DeSantis has received zero congressional endorsements. One person close to Mr. DeSantis, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a candidate whom the person still supports, said the governor had experienced a “challenging learning curve” that has left him “a little bit jarred.”In a note to donors on Thursday, Generra Peck, the DeSantis campaign manager, cast the campaign as making tough but necessary changes, writing that it would pursue an “underdog” approach going forward.“All DeSantis needs to drive news and win this primary is a mic and a crowd,” Ms. Peck wrote.Mr. DeSantis has privately forecast that the now twice-indicted Mr. Trump would struggle as his legal troubles mounted, but the governor continues to poll in a distant second place nationally.Ms. Peck, who has never worked at a senior level on a presidential campaign but made herself a trusted confidante of Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, has found herself under fire from both inside and outside a campaign that has been defined by silos, with various departments unaware of what is happening elsewhere. That the campaign did not hit expected fund-raising targets — and spent exorbitantly — caught the candidate and his wife by surprise, a person with knowledge of their reactions said.Mr. DeSantis still has time to reset. There have been no debates yet. His super PAC, which is called Never Back Down, brought in $130 million. And the first votes are nearly six months away in Iowa, where Mr. Trump has made missteps of his own.“Six months is a lifetime in politics,” said Terry Sullivan, who served as Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, noting that in July 2015 Jeb Bush was still ahead in some polling averages. “He has definitely burned a lot of time, but it’s been a learning process for his campaign.”Mr. DeSantis remains the only challenger to Mr. Trump polling in the double digits, and the only candidate that Mr. Trump himself treats as a serious threat.“What would concern me is if I woke up one day and Trump and his team were not attacking Never Back Down and Ron DeSantis,” said Chris Jankowski, the DeSantis super PAC’s chief executive. “That would be concerning. Other than that, we’ve got them right where we want them.”Two developments — the campaign’s failure to hit expected fund-raising targets and its exorbitant spending — caught Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, by surprise, a person with knowledge of their reactions said.Kathryn Gamble for The New York TimesA memo that hints at a splitStill, time is ticking. From the start, Mr. DeSantis has been trapped between the political reality that he is an underdog compared with the former president and the desire to project himself as a fellow front-runner separated from the rest of the G.O.P. pack.Mr. DeSantis himself acknowledged in a recent interview with Fox News that his earlier higher standing was only a “sugar high” from his landslide re-election and how that victory contrasted with the 2022 losses of several Trump-backed candidates.But the campaign has increasingly been tempted to punch down at lower-polling rivals, as in a memo to donors in early July that singled out Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina as someone who would soon receive “appropriate scrutiny.”That campaign memo landed at the pro-DeSantis super PAC’s Atlanta headquarters with a thud. It seemed to rebuke the super PAC, calling into question the group’s decision to stay off the airwaves in New Hampshire and the pricey Boston market. Legally, super PACs and campaigns cannot coordinate strategy in private, so leaked memos are one way they communicate.“We will not cede New Hampshire,” read one line that appeared in boldface for extra emphasis. In a reference to Boston, the memo read, “We see no reason why more expensive markets in New Hampshire should not also be prioritized.”But the super PAC, which has studied the memo line by line, may be unmoved by the suggestions. “We’re not easily going to change our course,” said one senior official with the DeSantis super PAC who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about strategic decisions.According to a person with direct knowledge of the process, the memo, first published by NBC News, was written by Ms. Peck, but without the input or knowledge of the broader campaign leadership team, an unusual move for such a highly scrutinized document.The candidate himself soon made clear that he, too, wanted to see changes.“I can’t control” the super PAC, Mr. DeSantis said recently on Fox News, before adding some specific stage directions. “I imagine they’re going to start lighting up the airwaves pretty soon with a lot of good stuff about me, and that’s going to give us a great lift,” he said.Since then, the super PAC has not aired a positive ad about Mr. DeSantis or returned to the airwaves in New Hampshire.‘He brought over almost his entire state apparatus’From the moment Mr. DeSantis entered the race with a two-day event at the ritzy Four Seasons in Miami, his team operated on the false premise that he could campaign the same way he did as governor, when Florida’s lax campaign finance rules allowed him to collect million-dollar donations and borrow the private planes of friends at will.Mr. DeSantis raised a robust $20 million in less than six weeks. But $3 million of that is earmarked for a general election and cannot be spent now, and his spending rate averaged more than $212,000 per day.The state of the campaign’s finances could be even more bleak than the snapshot presented in public filings. Some vendors did not show up on the report at all, suggesting some bills have been delayed, which would make the books look rosier.There were also signs of a severe slowdown in his online donations. In Mr. DeSantis’s first week as a candidate, in late May, his campaign paid significantly more in fees to WinRed, the main donation-processing platform for Republicans that receives a cut of every online dollar donated, than it did in the entire month of June.In addition to the roughly 10 staff members who were let go in mid-July, two more senior advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, left this month to work for an outside nonprofit that can boost Mr. DeSantis.“He brought over almost his entire state apparatus, and I think they looked at it and said we don’t need all of those people,” said Hal Lambert, a Republican donor who is raising money for the DeSantis campaign.The disclosures also exposed Mr. DeSantis’s dependence on his biggest contributors. Only 15 percent of his contributions came from donors who gave less than $200. Even more stark is that the lion’s share of his money came from donors who gave the legal maximum in the primary of $3,300.Mr. DeSantis raised a robust $20 million in less than six weeks. But his spending rate averaged more than $212,000 per day.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThe challenge for Mr. DeSantis in relying so heavily on bigger donors is twofold: It means that he must travel the country extensively to attend fund-raisers to gather their larger checks and that those big donors cannot give to him more than once. That the governor and his wife prefer to travel by private planes adds significant costs, and cuts into the net money raised when crisscrossing the nation for fund-raisers.His report showed $179,000 in chartered plane costs, along with $483,000 to a limited liability company that was formed within days of his campaign kickoff, with the expenditure only labeled “travel.” A senior campaign official said the campaign planned to make changes to travel practices “to maximize our capabilities,” though the person would not specify what changes were coming.One way to save on air travel is to have Mr. DeSantis burrow deeper into Iowa, where officials say he may visit all 99 counties.“He is positioned to do well in Iowa,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in the state, whose group, The Family Leader, hosted Mr. DeSantis and other candidates in Iowa for a recent forum. (Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC paid $50,000 to the group’s foundation, records show, which a super PAC official said was for a sponsorship of the event.)The DeSantis super PAC emphasized that after being overwhelmed by Mr. Trump in free media coverage and millions of dollars’ worth of attack ads, Mr. DeSantis was still standing.“Any other candidate would be bleeding on the ground,” said Kristin Davison, Never Back Down’s chief operating officer. “DeSantis,” she added, “is still No. 2.” More

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      Tim Scott Is Turning Heads With Donors and Early-State Voters

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      The South Carolina senator is gaining in early-voting states and has money, a positive message and a compelling story. Now he needs to take on the Republican front-runners.He is rising in the polls and turning heads in Iowa and New Hampshire, behind heavy spending on ads that play to voters’ appetite for a leader who is upbeat and positive in a dark political moment.He has experience, a compelling personal story and a campaign war chest that gives him staying power in a Republican primary that so far has been a two-man race. And among Republican voters, he is the candidate that everyone seems to like.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina is perfectly positioned to seize the moment if former President Donald Trump collapses under the weight of his criminal cases or if the challenge to him from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida evaporates.The only question is whether either moment will come.Mr. Scott’s growing popularity in early primary states has made him more of a contender in the still-young primary campaign and — in the eyes of current and potential supporters, and donors — a possible alternative to Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as an alternative to Mr. Trump.Andy Sabin, a wealthy metals magnate who switched his allegiance from Mr. DeSantis to Mr. Scott and is hosting a fund-raiser for three dozen wealthy donors in the Hamptons next month, cited his frustration with the front-runners and said he hoped that more in the donor class would join him in backing Mr. Scott. Prospective donors, Mr. Sabin said, “all want to see what he’s about.”“They’re disenchanted with Trump and DeSantis,” he said. “And the others, I’ve seen very little momentum.”Since he entered the race in May, Mr. Scott’s standing has slowly crept up in Iowa and New Hampshire. A University of New Hampshire poll of likely voters, out Tuesday, found him in third place among the state’s primary voters, with 8 percent of the vote, ahead of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, both of whom have focused intensely on the state.He is also running third in recent Iowa polls — at around 7 percent — and a few national polls have shown him as the second choice for many supporters of Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis, though it comes at a time when primary voters not committing to Mr. Trump are often considering several candidates.Mr. Scott’s strength in early states has caught the eye of other potential donors, including the billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, who met with Mr. Scott in South Carolina this month. In August, Mr. Scott will make a fund-raising swing through at least five states, including Colorado, Tennessee and Wisconsin.While he has not been as much of a presence on the campaign trail as his rivals have, Mr. Scott and his allied groups have poured considerable money into Iowa and New Hampshire, spending $32 million to run ads through January 2024 — more than any other Republican candidate or group on the airwaves, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. Mr. Scott is the only Republican contender who has booked ad time that far ahead.Mr. Scott, who has outspent his rivals on advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire, hopes to raise his national profile in next month’s first Republican debate.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Scott’s supporters say his positive campaign message and general appeal provide a contrast with the primary’s front-runners. The highest-ranking Black Republican, he is running on an only-in-America story as a candidate and a senator with roots in a low-income Charleston community.Still, though Mr. Scott has shown some momentum in the early states — including his home state — Republican voters have yet to flock to him en masse, and he is still relatively unknown nationally.A Quinnipiac University poll of voters nationwide found him tied with Mr. Christie in the primary among likely Republican voters, behind Ms. Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence, who are tied for third. And while he is well-liked in early primary states, more than half of Republican voters surveyed nationally said they did not know enough about him to have an opinion.Alex Stroman, the former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, acknowledged the issue but said that it was solvable. “I think that the more people are introduced to Tim Scott, that they are going to like Tim Scott,” he said. “The problem is, it is a crowded primary.”Asked during a town hall in New Hampshire on Tuesday how voters should contend with such a crowded field, Mr. Scott said he expected that “the field will dwindle pretty quickly” by the time voters cast ballots in the state’s February primary election.Mr. Scott’s campaign has been focused on a positive message and his faith. But some conservatives have said he needs to sharpen his message on key issues.Mic Smith/FR2 Associated Press, via Associated PressThe first opportunity to introduce himself to a national audience will be the Aug. 23 Republican debate. Mr. Scott’s campaign manager, Jennifer DeCasper, said recently that Mr. Scott had met the donor and polling thresholds to be on the debate stage. Mr. Scott, who raised more than $6 million in the second quarter, has more than $20 million in the bank — one of the largest war chests in the primary and enough, Ms. DeCasper maintained, to keep his campaign afloat through the Iowa caucuses and all three of the early state primaries.“At the end of the day, candidates can post any number they want,” she said. “But the name of the game is how much actual cash you have on hand that’s available for use in the Republican primary.”On Tuesday, Trust in the Mission PAC, a group supporting Mr. Scott, announced that it would spend $40 million on broadcast and digital advertising in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — a gigantic outlay that far outpaces the spending of any other candidate in the G.O.P. field and could possibly reshape it.The PAC’s spending reflects a huge bet on increasing Mr. Scott’s profile, especially as he maintains a relatively limited presence on the campaign trail: He has relegated his time in early primary states this month to the few days of the week that he is not in the Senate. The group has already shelled out more than $7 million on advertisements through the summer; the $40 million buy will kick in beginning in September. It is also helping fund a small field operation of about a dozen canvassers in the early primary states.One challenge Mr. Scott still faces is presenting a policy message that separates him from the rest of the Republican primary field. His advertisements in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are biographical, and some touch on national security, warning of the threat that China could pose, while others seize on cultural issues, criticizing Democrats’ policies on education and their views on race.But trying to appeal to a broad swath of Republican voters without alienating key portions of the party’s primary electorate has proved challenging.Terry Amann, an Iowa pastor who has met with most of the Republican candidates, said Mr. Scott needed to articulate a more solid policy plan to connect with the conservative evangelicals who could decide the caucuses in January. Though the senator’s conservative message and his frequent biblical allusions have endeared him to many Republican faith-based voters, Mr. Amann said, Mr. Scott has not clearly defined his stance on abortion restrictions.“If you’re going to be the candidate that stands out on faith, there are some issues that I believe are worth laying it down for, and that’s one of them,” he said. “That would be my challenge to him if he wants to step off from the rest of the pack.”With just over a month until the first debate and six months until the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Scott’s campaign still sees an opening to refine his message and consolidate more voters. Still, while he tries to surpass Mr. DeSantis, the bigger challenge will be wresting the support of more than half of Republican primary voters from Mr. Trump.“These campaigns, candidates, have to figure out what the hell they want voters to know about them,” said Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist in New Hampshire. Mr. Scott, because of his background, has a unique story to tell, which can get “people to listen a little bit,” Mr. Carney said. “That’s a great advantage.”But, he added, “the point isn’t just to get their interest — then you have to make the deal.”You have to sell the deal.”Ruth Igielnik More

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      What Improv Can Do for Mathematicians

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      Coaching sessions at the People’s Improv Theater were aimed at helping math experts connect with laypeople and give engaging presentations.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll solve for x and y, where x is a group of high-level mathematicians and y is an improvisational theater workshop. This one’s easy, even if you’re not very good at math. We’ll also look at Mayor Eric Adams’s fund-raising.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWhat’s funny about quadratic equations? Is there something to laugh at in Euclidean geometry?Those questions went unanswered in unusual coaching sessions last week, and no wonder: The instructor’s background is not in Cartesian geometry or matrix algebra but in improvisational theater and standup comedy.The students were mathematicians from across the country — assistant professors, postdoctoral students and a few who are months away from their Ph.D.s, along with Cindy Lawrence, the executive director and chief executive of the National Museum of Mathematics, which arranged the three-day workshop.The sessions were “not so much about being funny,” explained the instructor, Kihresha Redmond, the artistic director of the People’s Improv Theater, a comedy theater and improv training center on West 29th Street that is also known as the PIT. The purpose was to show the mathematicians how to do engaging presentations for laypeople.“You don’t get a Ph.D. because you’re just so-so at something,” Lawrence said, but mathematicians “may not be quick at responding to an audience and they may not be comfortable in front of a room of strangers. Improv helps you build those kinds of skills.”Redmond did not mention it to the group, but she knew something about math. “I thought it was something I was going to major in” when she went to college, she confided one morning last week, before the group arrived. “It was a last-minute left turn to theater.”One session with the mathematicians involved no scripts, no carefully rehearsed “to be or not to be” moments — and no math. It began with Redmond leading some loosening-up exercises. Later, as a drill in thinking fast and talking in front of an audience, she had the mathematicians conduct mock news conferences. They made up companies and products to promote and assigned someone in the group to be the spokeswoman fielding questions. The others in the group played reporters.Angela Avila, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the think-on-your-feet training would be useful in her work, which involves using math to solve agricultural problems, like how many more cows could be fed in a given pasture if a dairy farmer increased the nutrient yield.She said she could use artificial intelligence and “big fancy equations” to come up with an answer, but if she explained it that way, there would probably be a lot of head-scratching.“If I am speaking line from line on my research paper, they’d get lost,” she said, “but if I connect with them and read the energy in the room, that won’t happen.”Lawrence, from the math museum, said she had invited women to the workshop because women are underrepresented in mathematics and in science, technology and engineering. “It’s a problem that self-perpetuates because young women who don’t see female mathematicians get the impression that math is a field that’s not for them, it’s for men,” she said.She wants the participants to help bring about more balance by serving as role models for girls: Each workshop participant is to present a talk about her specialty in a setting like a middle school. She said the idea was “to incentivize women who maybe already have an interest in reaching the younger generation to do so” before their focus is on the publish-or-perish pressures of tenure-track academics.“One of the women told me she was not looking forward to improv and went along with it because it was part of the program,” Lawrence said. “She said this turned her mind completely around.”WeatherOn a partly sunny day with a high near the mid-80s, prepare for a chance of showers and thunderstorms persisting through the evening. At night, temps will drop into the low 70s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).The latest New York newsJohnny Milano for The New York TimesGilgo Beach killings: The wife of Rex Heuermann, the suspect in the Gilgo Beach murders, was away when the killings happened and has not been charged. Experts say it’s not unusual for the spouses of serial killers to be unaware of their crimes. Rikers management: The federal judge in charge of deciding whether New York City jails will be taken over by an outside authority expressed disapproval of how Rikers Island and other lockups are managed.Housing moves: Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a series of executive actions to promote residential real estate development and ease the state’s housing crisis.Museum director: Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, who most recently served as the president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, will be the next director and president of the Museum of the City of New York.Remembering Chisholm: City officials approved designs for a monument in Prospect Park to Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress.Landmarks’ protector: Beverly Moss Spatt, who battled real estate and political interests as chairwoman of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in the 1970s, died on Friday. She was 99.Amassing cash for a campaign that’s two years awayBenjamin Norman for The New York TimesEric Adams was a prodigious fund-raiser when he ran for mayor in 2021. Now, with his eye already on a second term, he is raising big money for 2025 — $1.3 million since January.My colleagues Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Nicholas Fandos write that Adams appears to be eager to amass a large war chest to fend off serious competitors. He faced seven serious opponents in the Democratic primary two years ago and won by only 7,197 votes.With matching funds that Adams campaign officials expect to receive under the city’s public financing system, his re-election effort is expected to have about $4.6 million on hand by the time the 2025 campaign gears up. The matching funds program can turn a $10 contribution from someone who lives in New York City into $90 for a campaign.Adams could be difficult to beat, despite recent setbacks. Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist who was a campaign manager for Andrew Yang, an Adams opponent two years ago, said the mayor’s low approval rating was not terribly worrisome — it fell to 46 percent in a Siena College poll last month. Coffey noted that Michael Bloomberg’s approval rating dipped as low as 24 percent in his second year in office, but he went on to win two more terms.Among Adams’s donors are Marc Holliday and Steve Green, the chief executive and founder, respectively, of the city’s largest commercial landlord, SL Green. Each gave $2,100. Also on the list of Adams contributors are Alexander and Helena Durst, from the Durst real estate dynasty. In addition, the mayor has taken in $12,600 from people who work for Top Rock Holdings, a real estate investment firm.A fund-raiser for the mayor at a performance of the Broadway musical “New York, New York” last month was lucrative despite lackluster reviews for the show. Seats went for as much as $2,100 apiece. Adams’s campaign took in about $600,000 from the event, which a campaign spokesman said was organized by Frank Carone, Adams’s former chief of staff.The real estate industry is also making donations to Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose term runs through 2026. Of the $4.5 million her campaign raised from January through June, more than $885,000 came from developers and real estate investors. Among the donors contributing $18,000 — the new legal maximum for statewide candidates — were Holliday; members of the Durst family; and Scott Rechler and Jeff Blau. Both are Democratic megadonors whose firms are competing with Holliday’s for a casino license for the New York City area.METROPOLITAN diaryA sliceDear Diary:He carried the box while they held each other’s hands, their sweat stuck between warm, tanned palms.They walked down the cobblestone street, and she kept her heels out of cracks in the ground. New York heat held her neck. It smelled like new deodorant, smoke, like summertime.She put her head near his ear.They sat at the bottom of a Brooklyn stoop — the lights were on — and he passed her a slice.Their elbows touched.She wiped the corner of his lip and put her leg over his.He traced constellations between spots of orange oil on her scabby knees.“It tastes good,” she said.“The cheese?” he asked with a laugh.“Yeah.”He whispered in her ear.“But we’re on the street,” she said.“Come on,” he said, and took her hand again.— Laila Hartman-SigallIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Shivani Gonzalez and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nyimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Adams’s Re-election Bid Fueled by Real Estate Titans and Out-of-Towners

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      The mayor has raised $1.3 million for re-election since January, relying on many wealthy donors from New York City and beyond.Despite falling poll numbers and critical news coverage, Mayor Eric Adams clearly has the continued monetary support of two influential spheres of influence: real estate leaders and the donor class from New York City and beyond.Mr. Adams has raised $1.3 million since January for his 2025 re-election effort in the latest reporting period, drawing maximum $2,100 donations from real estate magnates like Marc Holliday, the chief executive of SL Green, the city’s largest commercial landlord, and its founder, Steve Green; and Alexander and Helena Durst, members of The Durst Organization real estate dynasty, according to new filings with the city’s Campaign Finance Board. About $550,000 came from donors outside New York City who live in the suburbs, Florida and other states — a continuation of a pattern displayed early in his tenure, when he held fund-raisers in Beverly Hills and Chicago in his first months in office.As mayor, Mr. Adams has often taken positions that benefit the real estate industry, including being supportive of rent increases and criticizing state lawmakers for failing to replace a tax-incentive program for developers known as 421a.He has frequently met with real estate leaders and has used One Vanderbilt, one of the city’s newest skyscrapers, developed by SL Green, as a backdrop for photo ops and news conferences. As a small-time landlord, Mr. Adams once declared, “I am real estate.” And major landlords have consistently been among his most faithful donors.Mr. Adams frequently asserts that his political base of working-class New Yorkers and churchgoers understands and supports his mission. But the continued support from real estate interests only furthers the notion that Mr. Adams may be too aligned with major developers.Vito Pitta, a lawyer for the Adams campaign, insisted that the mayor’s success in addressing crime and job losses was driving donations.“Our campaign is well on its way to raising the maximum amount it can spend under the city’s campaign finance system — just 18 months into the mayor’s tenure — because New Yorkers see that Mayor Adams is lowering crime, increasing employment, and moving our city in the right direction,” Mr. Pitta said in a statement.Marc Holliday, left center, the chief executive of SL Green, the city’s largest commercial landlord, donated the maximum allowed to Mr. Adams, who watches from the side.Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesThe spending cap for the 2025 primary is $7.9 million. Under the city’s generous public financing system, his campaign is expected to have about $4.6 million on hand, after matching funds are included.Mr. Adams has faced a series of setbacks in recent weeks. His approval rating fell to 46 percent in a Siena College poll last month. A longtime associate of his was charged in a straw donor scheme to raise money for his mayoral campaign; the mayor was not implicated. The New York Times reported that a photo of a police officer killed in the line of duty, which the mayor said he had long carried in his wallet, was created by employees in the mayor’s office last year, and was made to look old.The mayor also drew attention for his response last month to an 84-year-old tenant-rights activist whose family had escaped the Holocaust. The mayor publicly likened her to a plantation owner after he believed the activist had been disrespectful to him.Still, Mr. Adams, a Democrat who ran for office on a public safety message, could be difficult to beat in 2025.He is likely eager to show off a large war chest to fend off a serious competitor. He won a competitive Democratic primary in 2021 by only 7,197 votes.“The bigger the fund-raising number, the less likely that someone else gets into the race,” said Chris Coffey, a former campaign manager for Andrew Yang, one of the mayor’s primary opponents in 2021.Mr. Coffey said that the mayor’s low approval rating was not too worrisome, noting that Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor, had an approval rating as low as 24 percent in his second year in office and still won two more terms.“If the city has made progress on public safety, it’s really hard to see the mayor have any re-election challenges,” Mr. Coffey said.The real estate industry once again also provided the largest donor base for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo Democrat who narrowly won a full four-year term in November. Of the $4.5 million her campaign raised in the first six months of the year, more than $950,000 came from developers and real estate investors, and more from other industries with business before the state, according to an analysis of her public filings by The Times.At least 45 donors connected to the real estate industry chipped in $18,000, the new legal maximum for statewide candidates, including Mr. Holliday, Scott Rechler and Jeff Blau. Mr. Rechler and Mr. Blau are both Democratic megadonors whose firms are competing with Mr. Holliday’s for a license to operate a casino in the New York City area.Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign raised $4.5 million since January, with roughly a fifth coming from developers and real estate investors.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesWith New York facing an affordable housing crunch, Ms. Hochul has spent much of the year fighting for new government programs to spur development. On Tuesday, she announced she would bypass opponents in the legislature and take executive actions that had been a priority of the real estate industry.Other major donors included members of the Sands family, which controls the Rochester-based beverage giant Constellation Brands; well-known Albany lobbyists Emily Giske, Giorgio DeRosa and the firm Cozen O’Connor; and tech executives like Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber. Ms. Hochul also brought in more than $250,000 at a fund-raiser this month from board members and doctors connected to Somos Community Care, a Bronx-based nonprofit that has tapped into lucrative government health programs.Ms. Hochul managed to raise the sum — plus another $1.5 million for the state Democratic Party — despite new, stricter contributions limits that cap individual gifts at $18,000, down from nearly $70,000 last election cycle. For much of the period, Ms. Hochul was also dealing with tumult within her political operation after reporting by The Times prompted the ouster of her top political aide.For his part, Mr. Adams was a prolific fund-raiser in 2021 and received significant support from a super PAC, which received donations from Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire who owns the Mets and is vying for a casino license in the city. Earlier this year, SL Green retained Frank Carone, the mayor’s former chief of staff, to aid its bid to build a Caesars Palace casino in Times Square.A Broadway fund-raiser for the mayor last month at a showing of the musical “New York, New York” proved especially lucrative. The campaign raised about $600,000 at the event, which was organized by Mr. Carone, according to Evan Thies, a spokesman for the campaign.Helena Durst, principal of the Durst Organization, donated the maximum of $2,100 to Mr. Adams’s campaign.Santiago Mejia/The New York TimesFred Elghanayan, a founder of TF Cornerstone, a real estate company, and Todd Cooper, a founder of RIPCO Real Estate, both donated to the Adams campaign. A dozen people who work at Morgan & Morgan, a national personal injury law firm, donated a total of $25,000 to the mayor’s campaign. Four employees of Meridian Properties, another real estate firm, donated $8,400. Six people who work at another real estate firm, Top Rock Holdings, each gave the maximum of $2,100 to the mayor’s campaign.Many donations came from outside the state, including from Alex Havenick, a gambling and cannabis entrepreneur in Miami, and David Kovacs, a virtual reality video game developer in Miami. Brock Pierce, a cryptocurrency investor who once flew Mr. Adams to Puerto Rico on his private jet, donated $2,100. He listed his address as a ZIP code in Puerto Rico.There were plenty of smaller donations as well. A senior pastor at a church in Queens donated $250 to the mayor’s campaign, as did the director of a New York City children’s theater. More

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      DeSantis, in Rare CNN Interview, Defends His Struggling Campaign

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      Despite rising scrutiny, the Florida governor stuck to the same strategy — including by defending his top rival, Donald Trump, in the face of new legal troubles.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, with his poll numbers sagging and his opponents circling, defended his struggling campaign on Tuesday, saying on CNN that he had been “taking fire nonstop” but was putting together the political operation he needed to win the early nominating states next year and vault to the presidency.His afternoon appearance in a rare interview in the mainstream news media seemed intended to reset his White House campaign after weeks of second-guessing from critics who have failed to see much progress in catching his main rival, Donald J. Trump. But a major shift in tone or strategy from Mr. DeSantis, either toward the former president or in the issues he focuses on, did not appear in the offing.He remained deferential to Mr. Trump even after the front-runner signaled on Tuesday morning that he could soon be indicted for a third time, in this instance on federal charges stemming from his efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. Speaking with the CNN host Jake Tapper in an interview recorded earlier in the day, Mr. DeSantis dodged questions on his support for a national abortion ban, whether he would commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan and how to end the war in Ukraine.But he expressed confidence that he was laying the groundwork for victory in the Iowa caucuses in January, and that he, as the only military veteran in the race, would win South Carolina, a military-heavy state that comes third in the primary process.“I’ll be the first president elected since 1988 that served in a war,” Mr. DeSantis, who served in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps in Iraq, said outside South Carolina’s capital building in Columbia. Simply appearing on CNN appeared to be an acknowledgment that Mr. DeSantis needs to change his approach after confining his interviews to conservative news outlets and relying on allies to take on the former president. Mr. Trump has comfortably led polls nationally and in the Palmetto State for months.And Mr. DeSantis’s newly released fund-raising figures, although strong overall at $20 million, showed that his campaign has been spending hand over fist and is dangerously dependent on large donors, who could be looking elsewhere for a Trump alternative. His campaign has also begun cutting its staff, in another worrying sign.Still, mindful of alienating core Republican voters who are sympathetic to Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis pulled his punches on Tuesday. After news broke that Mr. Trump had received a “target letter” from the special counsel, Jack Smith, the Florida governor said Mr. Trump “should have come out more forcefully” on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the rioting at the Capitol.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has mostly held interviews with friendly conservative news outlets, not mainstream organizations.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressBut Mr. DeSantis added that criminal charges would fit a pattern of weaponization of political institutions against conservatives.“I think what we’ve seen in this country is an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences,” he said during a campaign event in West Columbia, S.C.Mr. DeSantis’s social media team, in fact, pushed back on the suggestion that the governor was insufficiently supportive of the former president.How such deference might undermine Mr. Trump’s lead was unclear. Two Republican candidates from South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott and former Gov. Nikki Haley, are also hoping to capitalize on Mr. Trump’s legal peril and Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles and present themselves as the new alternative to the former president.For Mr. DeSantis, a drastic reboot of his campaign is not obvious.On Monday night in Tega Cay, S.C., on the North Carolina border, he stuck to his well-worn talking points: the supposed “indoctrination” of children by “leftist” educators; mobilizing the military to the southern border to stop “our country being invaded”; and his disappointment in Mr. Trump for failing to fire Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who helped lead the Covid-19 response.On Tuesday morning, Mr. DeSantis discussed military policy in an airplane hangar outside Columbia. He filed the paperwork formally declaring his candidacy in the state that morning.His remarks were heavy on themes he has hit since he joined the race: railing against diversity, equity and inclusion programs and what he called “woke operating policies” like drag shows, which the Defense Department ended last month. He also proposed to reinstate the Trump administration’s ban on transgender sailors, soldiers and marines, and promised to end funding for transition care for active-duty service members.Pressed by Mr. Tapper on how the roughly one million transgender adults in the United States would live under a DeSantis administration, the governor said military readiness took precedence over what he characterized as individual life choices.Beyond the military, he said, “I would respect everybody, but what I wouldn’t do is turn society upside down” to accommodate “a very, very small percentage of the population.”Mr. DeSantis also said he would reinstate service members who had been relieved of duty for declining to take the Covid-19 vaccine, a move that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III instituted a year ago.Although the Trump administration broadly moved against transgender rights throughout the federal government, the DeSantis campaign has framed Mr. Trump as weak on his opposition to rolling back L.G.B.T.Q. rights. It may be having an impact.Elizabeth James, 69, a retiree and self-proclaimed “grandmama for DeSantis” who lives in the Columbia area, said she supported Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 but soured on him after he “waffled” on transgender issues. She applauded Mr. DeSantis’s plans to end military funding for service members’ transition surgeries and said she believed that too few Republican voters knew enough about Mr. Trump’s record on L.G.B.T.Q. issues.“They’re just holding over from him in 2020 without re-examining where he is now,” she said of the former president. “I think he shifted a lot from where he was.”By holding the CNN interview, the governor had most likely hoped to quiet detractors who say he cannot handle the heat of a critical press.Mr. Tapper pressed Mr. DeSantis on whether he would sign a national ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, mirroring the ban he signed in Florida. He said he saw no evidence Congress could pass a national abortion ban.On committing to send U.S. troops to beat back a theoretical Chinese invasion of Taiwan, again, he dodged: “We’re going to deter that from happening.”And on the hot-button Republican issue of continued U.S. military support for Ukraine, he was even more vague.“The goal should be a sustainable, enduring peace in Europe, but one that does not reward aggression,” he said.The DeSantis political operation may be strengthening its jabs against Mr. Trump. The DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down confirmed on Tuesday that a new advertisement from the group had used artificial intelligence to mimic the voice of Mr. Trump as if it were attacking Iowa’s popular conservative governor, Kim Reynolds. Politico reported on the ad on Monday evening.Mr. Trump’s feud with Ms. Reynolds over her refusal to endorse him is real, and began with an attack on his social network, Truth Social. And it could hurt the former president’s chances in Iowa.But the ad falsely purports to catch Mr. Trump on tape. The super PAC said, “Our team utilized technology to give voice to Donald Trump’s words and Truth Social post attacking Gov. Reynolds.”The Trump campaign evinced no fear.“The DeSantis campaign doesn’t know how to turn things around with their current candidate,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, said in a statement. More

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      Senate Democrats Outpace Republicans in Fund-Raising in Key States

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      The 2024 election map is a challenging one for Democrats — especially in states they need to hold for a majority. But the incumbents made a strong financial showing this quarter.Senate Democrats staring down tough re-election fights can look to one bright spot: sizable fund-raising hauls and cash stockpiles more than a year before Election Day.In states where they are most vulnerable in 2024 — Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin — Democratic incumbents have raised more money than they previously have at this stage in earlier cycles, the latest campaign filings show. Saturday was the deadline for campaigns to file spending and fund-raising reports for the three months between April 1 and June 30.Most of the vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators also topped their prospective Republican challengers in fund-raising and will head into the fall with several million dollars in cash on hand.The race for Senate control is in its earliest months, and Republicans are still building campaigns. Yet the Democrats’ relative financial strength in the second quarter of an off year suggests significant energy as the party aims to protect its slim majority next year.The electoral map, however, will be one of the most challenging the party has faced in years. Nearly two dozen Democratic seats are up for re-election in 2024, with eight incumbents seen as vulnerable, while just 10 Republicans face re-election — and all of the G.O.P. incumbents won by comfortable margins in previous cycles.In their Senate re-election bids, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana both brought in more than $5 million. Mr. Brown had $8.7 million in cash on hand, and Mr. Tester $10.5 million. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin raised $3.2 million, the most ever raised in a Wisconsin Senate contest in an off year, according to her campaign.Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative Democrat who has not yet publicly said whether he will run for re-election — and is flirting with a third-party presidential run — raised $1.3 million over the last three months and has more than $10 million in the bank, expanding his cash advantage over Gov. Jim Justice and Representative Alex Mooney, Republicans who have already begun campaigns to unseat him.In Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey posted his best fund-raising quarter to date, bringing in more than $4 million for his re-election bid.Republicans have been preparing their own money machines and recruiting candidates in five states with vulnerable Democrats. Republican confidence has also been bolstered by the 2024 Senate map.The Democrats “are trying to use money to defy gravity,” said Stu Sandler, a political consultant and former political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “This is a lopsided map for them,” he added, pointing to former President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 victories in Ohio, Montana and West Virginia — all states Mr. Trump won decisively. And, he said, Republicans have some “very credible favorites” to challenge the incumbents.Democrats view this fund-raising as a crucial show of strength that will fortify their candidates ahead of a difficult 2024 cycle for the party.“Voters and grass-roots supporters are once again supporting battle-tested Senate Democratic candidates in record ways because they recognize the stakes of this election and the importance of stopping Republicans from implementing their toxic agenda,” said Tommy Garcia, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.In Arizona, Representative Ruben Gallego raised more than Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who has changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent, by two-to-one — the second time this year Mr. Gallego has notched such a ratio. He still trails Ms. Sinema in cash on hand by more than $7 million. Ms. Sinema has not yet announced whether she will run for re-election.Even Democrats in safe Republican territory had strong showings. In Texas, Representative Colin Allred raised $6.2 million in his challenge to Senator Ted Cruz. Mr. Allred, who announced his campaign in May, brought in more money in a shorter period of time than Mr. Cruz, who raised $4.4 million in the last three months. More

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      Biden’s Campaign Fund-Raising Filing Shows Sluggish Small Donations

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      Wealthy Democrats have thrown their money behind the president’s re-election bid, but for many reasons, the party’s small donors have yet to step up their contributions.When President Biden traveled to San Francisco last month, he raised more than $10 million in 36 hours from wealthy Democrats. Trips to Chicago and New York netted millions more, as did fund-raising events around Washington, proving that the party’s big-donor class is fully committed to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign.But the small-dollar online money spigot that helped Mr. Biden smash fund-raising records during his 2020 presidential campaign has not yet turned on, and there are ample signs that it may be months before it does.The Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund, its joint fund-raising vehicle, collected $10.2 million from small donors — defined as those who gave $200 or less — during the three-month fund-raising period that ended June 30, according to a Federal Election Commission report filed Saturday. That figure is about half of the $21 million President Barack Obama’s campaign raised during the same period of his 2012 re-election effort.Democrats involved with Mr. Biden’s campaign and the world of online fund-raising detailed a host of reasons for Mr. Biden’s relatively low small-dollar haul.Google and Apple have made it harder for email senders to see data about who has opened solicitations. Inflation slowed political donations across the board. Donors are exhausted by the unending flow of emails asking for money, and recipients are responding to far fewer of them.At the moment, Democrats aren’t quite as fired up as they were in 2018 and 2020, when Donald J. Trump’s presidency opened floodgates of liberal money, or ahead of the 2022 midterms, when the Capitol riot, the rise of the election-denial movement and the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade all motivated donors.And Mr. Biden is not an insurgent candidate who is motivating students to put up posters of him on dorm-room walls, as Mr. Obama or Senator Bernie Sanders did in their campaigns. His low-key White House and bare-bones campaign haven’t yet motivated supporters to rage-donate to his campaign.“Right now there’s there is no day-to-day competition combat going on,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul, whom Mr. Biden named a co-chairman of his campaign. “So these are the most loyal, most dedicated believers and supporters. It’ll build over time.”Mr. Biden’s campaign highlighted an array of statistics to promote its grass-roots donor operation. Nearly a third of its 394,000 donors did not contribute to Mr. Biden in 2020, the campaign said.Yet the president’s finance reports show that he is far more dependent on the wealthiest donors than Mr. Trump was in his re-election bid or Mr. Biden’s opponents were in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.Ten donors, including Mr. Katzenberg, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, and Stewart W. Bainum Jr., the Maryland hotel magnate, gave $500,000 or more to the Biden Victory Fund. Another 82 donors contributed $100,000 or more.Four years ago, 35 percent of the money raised by Mr. Trump and the two joint committees his campaign formed with the national committee — Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again Committee — came from donors who gave $200 or less. For Mr. Biden, 21 percent of funds to his campaign and the joint finance committee came from small donors.Small-dollar contributions are down across the political spectrum. An analysis conducted by Middle Seat, a digital fund-raising firm with an array of Democratic clients, found that small donors had given less money during the first fund-raising period of 2023 than they had in nearly four years — since early 2019.“If I were on the Biden team right now, I’d be really happy with the numbers,” said Kenneth Pennington, a partner at Middle Seat. “It’s a terrible fund-raising environment, and he’s not launching a new campaign.”While Mr. Biden’s total fund-raising was roughly on par with the Republican candidates, he outpaced them with small donors. Combined, the G.O.P. candidates raised $7.5 million from small donors to his $10.2 million.The percentage of contributions of less than $200 is typically at its high point at the beginning of a campaign and drops as campaigns proceed, because when the amount an individual donor has given exceeds $200, it triggers a federal disclosure requirement.When Mr. Biden began his 2020 campaign for president, 38 percent of the money his campaign raised during the comparable reporting period came from small donors. Democratic online fund-raising experts said they expected the pace of online giving to the Biden campaign to pick up early next year, once voters begin to pay more attention to the Republican primary race and the nominee to oppose Mr. Biden emerges.“Once Democratic donors become focused on the Republican primary and what’s at stake in the 2024 election, the Biden campaign will have no problem raising record amounts of money online,” said Lauren Miller, who served as digital director to Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaigns.Mr. Trump’s small-dollar percentage cannot be discerned until his joint fund-raising committees, into which most of his online solicitations direct money, report finances. They are not required to do so until July 31.Finance reports for the other Republican candidates reveal a party that, even more than Mr. Biden, is heavily reliant on large donors.Among the other Republican candidates, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida reported $2.9 million from small donors, but that figure accounts for a mere 14 percent of what his campaign raised. The small-dollar percentages among other candidates ranged from 34 percent for former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to 2 percent for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who is largely self-financing his campaign.Unlike the Obama and Trump campaigns, the Biden campaign didn’t begin with a digital fund-raising team in place. Instead, it has relied on the Democratic National Committee for its online solicitations. The campaign advertised last week that it was seeking a “director of email and SMS” to lead a division that typically would have more than a dozen people. The campaign recently hired a grass-roots fund-raising director, an official said Saturday.Mr. Biden’s campaign has plowed at least $3.3 million into advertising on Facebook and Google, according to data compiled by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a marketing and communications agency. That figure is far more than any Republican candidate has spent on the platforms and suggests that the campaign is investing in its search for small donors.Two of Mr. Biden’s top advisers, Anita Dunn and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who are overseeing his re-election campaign from the White House, this week formally blessed a super PAC, Future Forward, as the chief outlet for large sums of cash from supportive billionaires and multimillionaires. More