In the seven days after President Biden stepped down as the presumptive Democratic nominee, the Harris campaign raked in $200 million.
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The Harris campaign said it now had $377 million in its war chest, in contrast to the $327 million that the Trump campaign has said it has.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign survived a brutal few weeks of fund-raising in July to bounce back so dramatically before the end of the month that she more than doubled the amount of money raised by former President Donald J. Trump, her campaign announced on Friday.
The Harris campaign, which for the first 20 days of July was the Biden campaign, said it had raised $310 million during the month, including $200 million in just seven days after President Biden dropped out of the race.
The Trump campaign and its own allies said on Thursday that they had collected $139 million in July, an enormous sum but well short of what the Harris campaign said it had brought in amid a huge burst of enthusiasm about her candidacy. The Harris campaign raised almost as much in July as the Biden campaign had raised in March, April, May and June combined.
The surge in fund-raising has allowed Democrats, for the first time in months, to have a cash-on-hand advantage over Republicans. The Harris campaign said it now had $377 million in its war chest, in contrast to the $327 million that the Trump campaign has said it has.
Neither campaign disclosed precisely how much of the money was raised or held by the campaigns themselves versus their allied party committees.
Democrats’ fund-raising was said to have plummeted in the first three weeks of the month, in the aftermath of Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate, although precise figures were not known or released by the Biden campaign. But after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, the fund-raising spigot was opened wide. The $200 million that the Harris campaign said it had raised in the week after Mr. Biden ended his re-election bid was more than Mr. Biden’s haul in the first three months of the year.
The Trump campaign’s own fund-raising was strong — and most likely would have far outstripped the Democrats’ had the party not changed its standard-bearer. The $139 million raised in July amounted to one of the Trump team’s strongest fund-raising months to date, just off the sum raised in May, when Mr. Trump’s supporters responded to his felony conviction with $141 million in donations.
After collecting $112 million in June, donations for the Trump team ticked up in July as Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt, was formally nominated at the Republican convention in Milwaukee and picked Senator JD Vance of Ohio to be his running mate — events that surely motivated his donors and supporters.
July was the second straight month in which Democrats out-raised the Trump team. In June, when Mr. Biden was still atop the ticket, his campaign raised $127 million and ended the month with $240 million on hand, all before the history-making events that would unfold over the next four weeks.
Theodore Schleifer writes about campaign finance and the influence of billionaires in American politics. More about Theodore Schleifer
See more on: 2024 Elections, Democratic Party, Republican Party, President Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump
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Source: nytimes.com
