On Wednesday, August 7th, the presidential campaign team of US Vice President Kamala Harris announced that within 24 hours of naming Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, they raised $36 million.
Kamala Harris, who was just nominated as the Democratic party’s presidential candidate, quickly garnered support from financially strong Democrats, once again drawing attention to her fundraising prowess.
Her campaign team recently revealed that they raised a record-breaking $3.1 billion in July, bringing their cash on hand to $3.77 billion. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign team reported raising $1.38 billion with $3.27 billion in cash on hand. As it stands, Harris’ cash advantage has surpassed Trump’s.
Additionally, many major donors typically support Super Political Action Committees (Super PACs) and other independent political groups. These organizations are not subject to the $6,600 per person limit on direct campaign contributions set by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), making their donation situation less transparent.
These Super PACs can largely foot the bill for a candidate’s campaign expenditures but cannot directly engage in campaign team activities and coordination.
According to Fox News citing data from the FEC, from January 2023 to June 30th, Biden’s (now Harris’) campaign committee raised a total of $28.41 billion, while former President Trump’s campaign committee raised $21.72 billion.
However, as of the end of June, the Trump team had a cash flow advantage, with $128.1 million in hand, compared to the Democratic campaign team’s $96 million.
According to OpenSecrets, by the end of June, the top ten political action committees supporting Trump had raised around $25.59 billion. Nine external political action committees supporting Harris (Biden) raised $16.46 billion.
For some time, due to significant legal fees, Trump had lagged behind Biden’s campaign in fundraising. However, following his conviction in the “hush money case,” Republican super-wealthy donors rallied to support him, injecting a large amount of new funding into the Trump team and narrowing the gap with the well-funded Harris campaign team.
When Biden’s campaign committee announced its fundraising situation on May 20th, they reported $51 million raised in April, with $192 million in cash on hand. Two foundations supporting Biden – the Biden for President campaign and its main ally Super PAC FF PAC (Future Forward USA Action) – stated that by the end of April, they had over $14.15 million in cash.
During that same period, the Trump campaign committee had about $39 million in cash on hand. Three foundations supporting Trump reported having approximately $92 million in cash.
Yet, in May, after Trump was convicted on 34 felony charges in the “hush money case” in Manhattan, his campaign team raised $52.8 million within 24 hours, totaling $141 million for that month. This led to the Republican small donor platform WinRed temporarily crashing due to high traffic.
Additionally, the Trump campaign team and the Republican National Committee announced that the “Organizations Supporting President Trump (Super PAC)” raised an additional $150 million in May.
Last month, following Biden’s poor performance in the debate with Trump, calls within the Democratic party for Biden to withdraw from the race grew louder.
On July 12th, The New York Times cited two sources reporting that several key Democratic donors said they would withhold approximately $90 million if Biden did not withdraw and temporarily stop donating to his main Super PAC.
On July 21st, under internal pressure, Biden announced his withdrawal and called for supporting Kamala Harris’ candidacy. Subsequently, the Biden campaign committee was renamed the Kamala Harris campaign committee.
This announcement ended the previous chaos within the Democratic party, boosting morale within the party. Following this, within 24 hours of starting her campaign, Kamala Harris raised $81 million.
In the following week, Harris raised over $2 billion, with 66% of donors being first-time contributors to this year’s election.
The exact amount of funds each candidate has in their accounts will only be revealed after the Federal Election Commission (FEC) releases its latest report on August 20th.