Democrats take early steps for 2020 White House run
Kenneth P. Vogel and Rachel Shorey WASHINGTON — Aides to Sen. Kamala Harris of California say her fundraisers in Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons this summer have been all about helping Democrats in 2018.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s allies say his new political group is building an email list so he can communicate directly with his supporters about the future of the party and the country.
And Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio says he has been traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire in part because “I like being out around the country.”
But the packed fundraising calendars, brisk political spending and trips to early primary states suggest that in fact a shadow campaign for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination is already well underway.
In interviews, more than three dozen leading Democratic donors, fundraisers and operatives agreed that it was the earliest start they had ever seen to the jockeying that typically precedes the official kickoff to the campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. It is a reflection of the deep antipathy toward President Donald Trump among Democrats, and the widespread belief that the right candidate could defeat him, but also of the likelihood that the contest for the nomination could be the longest, most crowded and most expensive in history.
“They used to start coming to talk to you two years before the election. Now, it’s six months after the last presidential election,” said Wall Street billionaire Marc Lasry, a major political donor who has met recently with several Democrats mentioned as prospective presidential candidates.
“It’s gotten ridiculous,” Lasry said. “Everybody believes they can be the person who will stack up great against Trump. I tell them all that it’s way too early and that they need a clearer message about what they want to do, not just about opposing Trump.”
Well before most candidates will announce they are running and publicly plead for support from voters, as many as 20 prospective Democratic candidates are taking steps that could lay the financial foundation for a campaign, even if actually running turns out to be only a transitory thought.
They are making their cases to wealthy donors, while spending briskly through political committees to pay staff members, organize fundraisers, arrange travel and rally small donors and volunteers, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and state regulators.
Before any run for president, many prospective candidates are facing 2018 re-election campaigns of their own. But in several cases, they are not expected to face serious challenges, and their re-election campaigns are being watched closely by donors and other party insiders to assess their viability for 2020.
In much the same way, Hillary Clinton used her Senate re-election campaign in New York in 2006 to build a staff and national fundraising operation that became the foundation for her unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton’s successor in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, has paid more than $1 million this year through her political committees to a top online fundraising firm, which has helped her reap $2.3 million in small donations for a 2018 re-election race in which she is the heavy favorite. She has also continued courting major donors, holding two fundraisers last month in the Hamptons.
At one, she was asked by a donor whether she was considering running for president. She said she was focused on 2018, but did not explicitly rule out a White House run, according to an attendee.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who maintains deep ties to some of the party’s most generous donors, has spent $164,000 through his political committee on staff members and consultants this year and $46,000 in recent months to hold fundraisers and other events at a Washington steakhouse.
The PAC, which rents office space in Washington, this year collected big checks from longtime backers of the Clintons, including $50,000 from Howard Kessler, a Boston financier, and $25,000 each from Albert J. Dwoskin, a Virginia real estate developer, andDouglas J. Band, a former Clinton aide and fundraiser. The PAC has also donated more than $315,000 to Democratic candidates and committees in Virginia this year.
McAuliffe — who is barred by term limits from running in the Virginia governor’s race this year — said during an appearance on CNN that he got asked “all the time” whether he was running for president.
“We’ll see what happens down the road. But I have no intentions of running for president,” he said, explaining that his focus was on finishing his governorship and helping the party’s gubernatorial candidates in 2018.
Aides to Gillibrand and those of other prospective candidates contacted for this article similarly insisted that their fundraising had nothing to do with setting the stage for 2020.
Major donors figure to play an outsize role in the 2020 Democratic race, which will be the first with neither an incumbent nor a candidate who is a clear donor favorite since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. That ruling paved the way for outside groups technically independent from the campaigns, including those known as super PACs, to raise unlimited sums from wealthy donors and corporations to support or oppose candidates.
But there also are early indications that the courtship of the party’s donor class could in itself become an issue the way it did in 2016, when Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont did little high-dollar fundraising. Relying instead on a historic surge in small donations brought in by a sophisticated online fundraising operation, Sanders charged that Clinton was insufficiently supportive of liberal proposals like publicly funded education and health care because she was beholden to special interests and big donors.
Sanders is still at it, crisscrossing the country stumping for populist candidates and causes. A political organization founded by his former campaign aides has raised nearly $5.3 million in the past year from donations that average $22. And, even as he faces his own 2018 re-election race in Vermont, his backers are signaling that they will support another presidential run.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, whose populist rhetoric has attracted a grass-roots activist and donor base that overlaps with Sanders’, has said that the party should avoid a temptation to moderate its views and that its candidates should not “grovel on Wall Street” to raise money.
Warren has built a formidable online fundraising operation, which has brought in $5.1 million this year for her 2018 re-election campaign and allowed her political action committee to donate $270,000 to other Democrats. Yet she also has joined a parade of would-be Democratic presidential contenders who have paid visits to the wealthy summer enclaves that serve as ATMs for the party’s candidates.
“I think Elizabeth is laying the groundwork for a run. She won’t admit it, but it looks like that,” said Guy Saperstein, a San Francisco lawyer and part owner of the Oakland Athletics.
So far, only Rep. John Delaney of Maryland has said he will be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, announcing that he will not run for re-election in order to wage a longshot campaign.