Biden camp reportedly brought in $300 million last month
Joe Biden is expected to report a record-breaking haul of donations for August, raising more than $300 million between his campaign and his shared committees with the Democratic Party, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The sum would shatter past monthly records as small donors have poured money into Biden’s coffers, especially since the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, and big contributors, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, have given checks that can be as large as $721,300.
In a sign of the financial momentum behind Democrats, ActBlue, the main site that processes donations to the party, reported the second-biggest fundraising day in its history Monday, with more than
$35 million donated. A majority of Biden’s August total came from online grassroots donors, according to another person familiar with the figures.
Biden’s sum laps what is believed to be the previous monthly record of $193 million, set by Barack Obama in September 2008, though there is no formal record keeping.
The news of the money haul comes as the general election enters an intense final two-month sprint following the conventions. President Donald Trump traveled to Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday, the site of unrest following the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake. The president has tried to cut into Biden’s polling lead by distorting Biden’s record on law enforcement and accusing the former vice president of being tolerant of violent mobs.
Biden has forcefully rejected that characterization and charged that it was the president who was making the country unsafe with divisive, inflammatory behavior.
Both sides are ramping up television and digital ad buys, and Biden’s enormous haul ensures he will have the funds to both defend states that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 and to try to make incursions into Trump’s territory.
However far above $300 million the final figure is, it would greatly surpass previous monthly hauls by candidates of both parties. It is more, for instance, than what Trump ($90 million) and Clinton ($143 million) raised in August 2016 — combined.
In July, Trump and the Republican National Committee brought in $165 million, their biggest monthly total ever, topping Biden and the Democrats, who raised $140 million. Trump entered August with more than $300 million in the bank in tandem with the party; Biden had $294 million, according to the campaigns.
The Trump campaign has not announced its August fundraising total but said it raised $76 million over its four-day convention last week, slightly more than the $70 million that the Biden campaign said it collected during its convention a week earlier.
In a sign of how flush the former vice president’s campaign is, Biden reserved a two-minute commercial nationally on the final night of the Republican National Convention contrasting himself with Trump.
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, scoffed that the Biden campaign was wasting its funds.
“The Biden campaign would’ve been smarter to light it on fire and use it to stay warm on a cold wintry night,” he said in an interview before the full Biden fundraising figure was known. “They literally just threw it away.”
The Biden campaign had previously announced that it raised $48 million in the first 48 hours after Harris was named as Biden’s vice presidential choice.