Sanders, Buttigieg lead in campaign funding
US SENATOR Bernie Sanders and Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced robust fundraising numbers as they battle a crowded field of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Before putting their campaign on hold, the Sanders campaign said the 78-yea r-old senator from Vermont had raised $25.3 million in the third quarter of the year from $1.4 million donations.
Sanders said he had been treated for a blocked artery on Wednesday, becoming the first in a race dominated by septuagenarians to halt their campaign for health reasons.
Sanders’ team said he was cancelling events and appearances “until further notice” after complaining of chest pains while on the campaign trail in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday.
Sanders later wrote on Twitter that he was “feeling good”.
He has raised $18 million in the second quarter and a total of $61.5 million since launching his bid for the Democratic White House nomination in February.
The Buttigieg campaign said the 37-yea r-old mayor of Sout h Bend, Indiana, raised $19.1 million during Ju l y t h r ou g h S e pt ember f r om 580,000 unique donors.
Buttigieg has raised $24.9 million in the second quarter and a total of $51 million since the beginning of the year.
The campaigns for frontrunners Joe Biden, 76, Barack Obama’s former vice president, and ElizabethWarren, 70, the senator from Massachusetts, have not yet released their totals for the quarter.
The latest average of national polls by RealClear Politics has Biden leading t he crowded f ield wit h 27.2 per cent, Warren at 23 per cent, Sanders at 17.8 per cent, Buttigieg at 5.4 per cent and California Senator Kamala Harris at 4.6 per cent.
The Harris campaign said it raised $11.6 million in the third quarter, around the same amount as in the previous two quarters of the year.
Meanwhile, Brad Parscale, President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, announced that the Republican National Committee and Trump campaign raised $125 million combined during the third quarter.
“Huge fundraising haul this quarter. T he @ gop a nd @ re a l DonaldTrump campaign brought in 125 million ! ! ! ” Parsca le t weeted.
In a statement, the Sanders campa ig n noted t hat a l l of t he f unds r a i sed du r i ng t he qua r ter were “grassroots donations”.
“Media elites and professional pundits have tried repeatedly to dismiss this campaign, and yet working-class Americans keep saying loudly and clearly that they want a political revolution,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said.
The Buttigieg campaign said it has the “resources to go the full distance and to win the 2020 nominating contests”.
The 19 Democrats in the field had until Tuesday to be selected – on the basis of t hei r pol l i ng a nd donor numbers – for the next Democratic debate to be held on October 15 at Otterbein Universit y in Ohio.