Biden rebounds, Warren slows, Sanders rolls
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s slip in the 2020 primary polls has been accompanied by a dip in donations, with her campaign setting a rare public goal: aiming to raise $20 million for the fourth quarter of 2019 ending Tuesday, or about 20% less than what she raised in the previous three-month period.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has rebounded from a weak third quarter, in which he raised only $15.7 million and spent $2 million more than he took in. Now his campaign is trying to assert his front-runner status in the Democratic race, pushing in the final 48 hours of the year to post “our biggest fundraising quarter yet,” as Biden wrote in an email Sunday, by topping the $21.5 million he raised last spring.
The shifting financial fortunes of Warren and Biden illustrate the unsettled nature of the Democratic presidential contest heading into 2020, with four candidates — Biden, Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana — battling for position in the top tier of polling and seeking to bolster their treasuries ahead of the final sprint to the Iowa caucuses and beyond.
Sanders is expected to remain a financial pacesetter in the 2020 contest. He has about 1.6 million individual donations this quarter alone and is nearing a goal of 5 million total contributions. With an average donation of $18 for the year, and slightly less than that now, the numbers suggest he has already raised about $26 million in the fourth quarter — more than any Democratic candidate has raised in any quarter this year.
No other 2020 candidate has announced reaching 3 million donations for the year.
Buttigieg is closing in on 2 million donations (he has more than 1.95 million, according to campaign emails). That means he has already received more than 700,000 contributions this quarter, his most in a three-month period. He recently said his average donation was around $30, suggesting a haul of more than $21 million. Buttigieg raised $19.1 million and $24.6 million in the previous two quarters.
The impending quarterly deadline Tuesday is critical for the campaigns as they urge their supporters to help them finish the year on a strong note. It is also the last time before the nominating contests begin that they will be required to open the books on their finances, with full reports to be released Jan. 31.
The money chase shows not only which candidates are most viable for a potentially long and contested primary battle but also who has a diverse and well-built financial foundation for a potential general election matchup against President Donald Trump, who entered October with $158 million between his campaign and shared committees with the Republican Party.
The estimated hauls are very much subject to change, since campaigns can bank millions in the final days of the quarter. And while the the topline figures for money raised are significant, the Democratic campaigns’ cash situation — how much they have in the bank for ads, organizers and field programs — is more crucial now that voting begins in less than 40 days.
Despite Biden’s turnaround on the fundraising front — he raised more in just October and November than he had the previous three months — he entered the fall with only a fraction of the cash of his leading rivals. His $9 million in the bank Sept. 30 trailed Buttigieg by $14.4 million, Warren by $16.7 million and Sanders by $24.7 million, gaps he is unlikely to substantially close.
That is perhaps one reason Biden reversed himself in late October and blessed his supporters’ forming a super PAC, which has already begun airing television ads in Iowa. (His campaign has said he reversed his stance because of anti-Biden ads funded by Trump.)
It has been a turbulent three months in the fundraising world as one of the race’s stronger fundraisers, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, dropped out unexpectedly in early December, sparking a frenzy among other campaigns for her mostly California-based team of financiers. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York also entered the race and began to spend some of his multibillion-dollar personal fortune on an enormous nationwide television ad campaign, reshaping the financial landscape beyond the early-voting states where another billionaire, Tom Steyer, has been flooding the airwaves.
Besides the race’s four polling leaders, Andrew Yang, the businessman who has surprised political observers with his staying power and a devoted online following he affectionately calls the Yang Gang, is expected to be the only other contender to crack $10 million raised in the fourth quarter.
“We expect to raise more than $12.5 million, at least 25% more than the previous quarter,” said S.Y. Lee, a spokesman for Yang.
How candidates are raising their money — and whom they solicit for contributions — has become a central point of contention in the primary in recent weeks, with Sanders and Warren touting their independence from the traditional world of big contributors while hitting Biden and Buttigieg for their reliance on wealthy donors.
“For far too long, the wealthy and the powerful have used their money to buy our candidates and our elections,” said Tim Tagaris, a senior adviser to Sanders. “And what Bernie Sanders is proving — for the first time — is that one can run for president without begging them for their money.”
In a sign of the breadth of donors that Sanders counts, his campaign was pushing for 135,000 donations in the last two days of the year; Biden has set a goal of 500,000 donations for the entire quarter.
Warren, who like Sanders has decided not to make appeals to big donors at traditional fundraisers, has called for her rivals to disclose their lists of “bundlers,” who have gathered campaign checks for them. In turn, Warren has been pressed about the $10 million she transferred to her presidential campaign from her 2018 Senate bid, when she was still courting such large contributors.
Both Biden and Buttigieg recently did disclose their bundlers, with Buttigieg sharing the names of more than 100 people or couples who had gathered at least $25,000 and Biden disclosing more than 200. Biden appeared to time his release to minimize attention, revealing the names of his top fundraisers late on the Friday evening after Christmas.
Biden has seen some of the bundlers for his former rivals who have left the race — especially Harris but also former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas — gravitate toward him as he continues to lead in national polling. Former Harris supporters now backing Biden include John Emerson, an investment executive in California; two influential New York finance-world fundraisers, Marc Lasry and Blair Effron; and Alex Heckler, an attorney in Florida.
Two other candidates who have struggled relative to the leaders to raise money and garner attention are hoping to finish 2019 on a high note.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who missed the December debate because of the polling threshold, said two weeks ago that he needed to raise $800,000 to have his best quarter of the year. His previous high was $6 million. He had raised $641,000 of the $800,000 goal as of early Monday, according to a campaign fundraising email.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has announced raising more than $1 million in the 24 hours after two recent debates, and has said she would report more money than last quarter, when she raised $4.8 million.