Dems take early first steps for 2020 elections

Well before most will announce, several hopefuls building financial foundations

WASHINGTON — Aides to Sen. Kamala Harris of California say that 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 it’s the earliest start they’ve 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 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 2006 to build the foundation for her 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 this year in small donations for a 2018 re-election race. 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, said 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 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, and Douglas 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 Sunday on CNN that he gets asked “all the time” whether he is 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.

Aides to Gillibrand and other prospective candidates contacted for this article similarly insisted their fundraising has 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 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 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 PAC to give $270,000 to other Democrats. Yet she also has joined a parade of would-be presidential contenders who have paid visits to the wealthy summer enclaves that serve as ATMs for 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. He said in an interview that he was willing to underwrite his campaign from a personal banking fortune estimated at $90 million but that he was working to raise money from a mix of small and large donors.

“The role of the big donor, if you will, is less than it used to be,” Delaney said. “Any candidate running for president in 2020 needs to have a comprehensive strategy for running a well-funded campaign.”

Harris’ political action committee is paying the consulting firm that powered Sanders’ small-dollar juggernaut. And she has also worked to expand her big-donor network beyond her base in California, where she attended a fundraiser at the home of Hollywood agent Michael Kives on Monday that raised more than $100,000 for her PAC. Donors in attendance seemed to be in agreement that their home-state senator would make a strong presidential candidate, even though Harris avoided the topic, according to one person who was at the dinner.

Harris is not up for re-election until 2022. Her political committee has donated $130,000 this year to Democratic candidates and committees, and she has raised additional money for other Democrats. Lily Adams, a spokeswoman for Harris, said the senator’s “sole priorities are fighting for Californians and electing and re-electing Democrats to the House and Senate.”

Biden, who already has deep ties to major donors, has been reaching out through his staff to arrange one-on-one meetings with some of the top donors in the party, according to donors who have been invited to meet with him.

“He is thinking about how he plays in this moment as a former vice president,” said Quentin T. James, the founder of a group called the Collective PAC that supports African-American candidates, who was at the meeting. “I do think he has a desire to get back out there politically. If that means 2020, I don’t know.”