Harris fundraising hauls set up 11th-hour spending edge against Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris’s sizable fundraising hauls have allowed her to amass a significant advantage in cash on hand over former President Donald Trump and set her up to crowd him off the airwaves in the leadup to the election.

Going into 2024, Trump was expected to lag far behind President Joe Biden in terms of fundraising and, indeed, he did for much of the year until his conviction in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money case. 

The development prompted a flood of contributions to the campaign, which continued in the wake of the July assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pa. But Republican momentum was blunted significantly by the replacement of Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris, who has managed to reinvigorate Democratic fundraising and bring in sums that dwarf even Trump’s increased sums.

The Harris campaign brought in $361 million in the month of August alone. The sum more than doubled the Trump campaign’s August haul of $130 million. In July, which saw her as the presumptive nominee for only a portion of that month, she brought in $310 million. That figure included more than $200 million raised in the first week of her candidacy. In that month, the Trump campaign raised only $138.7 million. 

At present, the Harris campaign has $404 million in cash on hand while Trump has $295 million, according to the New York Times. The sums represent a stunning reversal of the fundraising situation from the Trump vs. Biden race just months before.

Biden slightly outpaced Trump in June, raising $127 million to his $111.8 million in that month. But the quarterly totals revealed a significant edge for Trump. Biden raised a combined $264 million from April through June compared to Trump’s $331 million. The Democratic campaign ended that period with $240 million in cash on hand while the Trump campaign had $284.9 million.

In April, Trump and his allied groups raised a combined $76 million compared to Biden and the DNC’s $51 million, a reversal of the March sums in which the Biden camp brought in $90 million to Trump’s $65.6 million.

By the end of May, the Republicans had erased the Democratic cash advantage, raising $141 million that month to the Democrats’ $81 million. Trump stood ahead with $116.5 million in cash on hand at the time to Biden’s $91.6 million.

The fundraising momentum for the Republicans came in part due to evident public disapproval of the Alvin Bragg case. The campaign announced in late May that it had raised $52.8 million within the first 24 hours of the verdict. Of that sum, $34.8 million came from small dollar donors and 29.7% of donors were first time contributors through the WinRed platform, according to the campaign.

The fundraising totals were just one source of pressure pushing Biden to drop his campaign, however. Members of his own party began piling on the wake of his disastrous debate performance against Trump during which he often appeared lost on stage and stumbled over his own words.

Biden, in late July, caved to pressure and announced that he would not seek reelection. He further endorsed Harris to succeed him as the party standard bearer. The Democrats then speedily confirmed her as its nominee through a virtual roll call and without any contender emerging to challenge her for the slot.

The president’s withdrawal also followed months of reported frustrations from Democratic mega-donors over their concerns that Biden could not beat Trump and amid disagreements over Biden's handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

In May, some pro-Israel donors drew attention with their pleas to Biden to reverse course on pausing certain arms shipments. But donor frustrations became more overt by early July, when some began to publicly withhold financial support over his candidacy.

“Joe Biden has been a very effective president, but unless he steps aside my family and I are pausing on more than $3 million in planned donations to nonprofits and political organizations aligned with the presidential race, with the exception of some down ballot work,” Moriah Fund President Gideon Stein said in July. “Virtually every major donor I’ve talked to believes that we need a new candidate in order to defeat Donald Trump.”

But frustration with Biden as the party candidate was evidently of import not just to major donors, but to average contributors, many of whom lined up to contribute to Harris within days or her campaign launching.

In late July, supporters of Harris organized a string of Zoom calls aimed at specific demographic groups that drew participants in the tens of thousands and raised seven-figure sums on her behalf organically.

Among the first was a call organized by Win with Black Women that raised $1.5 million and drew 44,000 participants. That call went on to inspire similar efforts, including one labeled “White Women: Answer the Call” that drew 164,000 attendees and raised as much as $8.5 million.

Subsequent Zoom calls addressed other demographics. One targeting black men reportedly raised $1.3 million while a “South Asian Women for Harris” call raised $260,000.

The campaign announced Friday that it had raised $615 million since the start of her campaign. Her August sum alone, moreover, came from just under 3 million donors, The New York Times reported. Of those, 1.3 million donors made their first contribution of the election cycle and nearly three in four of the new donors did not contribute to Biden’s 2020 campaign.

“What we have got right now is the kind of grassroots enthusiasm that money can’t buy,” Harris deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty told the NYT. He did, however, taper expectations for the cash advantage’s utility, calling it “deceptive because all that money is committed to the things we need to do to win.”

But the Trump campaign has its own reasons to be optimistic. Of the $130 million haul in August, 98% of contributions were $200 or less.

“With Republicans united and a growing number of Independents and disaffected Democrats crossing partisan lines, the Trump-Vance campaign has momentum for the final stretch of the race,” senior Trump campaign adviser Brian Hughes said earlier this week. “These fundraising numbers from August are a reflection of that movement and will propel President Trump’s America First movement back to the White House so we can undo the terrible failures of Harris and Biden.”