Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event Tuesday at West Allis Central High School in suburban Milwaukee. Photo / Sara Stathas for The Washington Post
Weeks of pent-up Democratic panic gave way to a historic flood of campaign cash for likely US presidential nominee Vice-President Kamala Harris this week, as allied groups reported massive fundraising hauls amid donor elation.
The co-ordinated Harris campaign reported today that it had raised more than US$100 million (nearly $170m), from 1.1 million donors in the first 41 hours after President Joe Biden announced he was stepping aside.
FF PAC, also known as Future Forward, the largest outside group supporting Biden, announced US$150m in commitments in the first 24 hours after his announcement on Monday.
Some funds had been withheld during the weeks of concern over Biden’s path to victory after his stumbling, confused performance at a June 27 debate prompted calls for him to drop out. But major donors and fundraisers reported newfound energy, both in donations to political groups that report the contributions and to non-profits that do not, which are funding much of the organising effort in key states that will benefit the Democratic candidacy.
“It really feels like a moment in history that we are going to talk about 10 years or decades from now. It is something we have not seen for a long time,” said Ning Mosberger-Tang, a major donor and former executive at Google, who announced plans to host a fundraiser for Harris in the coming weeks. “A lot of people including myself, we were paralysed in the last few weeks. A lot of us were not giving money to anything. Now we are seeing the floodgates have opened.”
Dmitri Mehlhorn, a donor adviser and Democratic strategist, agreed the flood of energy was directly related to the pent-up agony of the previous weeks.
“The financial situation is optimised for Democrats because the pressure campaign against Biden created a huge amount of tension that could have broken the Dem campaign organisations,” Mehlhorn said. “But it didn’t break. It snapped back like a bolt or catapult. Joe’s sacrifice has put people in the mode of sacrifice.”
Even those donors who had previously called for an open and competitive process to replace Biden have become resigned to the reality that Harris faces no major challenge for the job. Media mogul Mike Bloomberg, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, released a statement Monday calling on the party to take its time to settle on a candidate, saying the “decision is too important to rush”.
But within hours, it became clear Harris was destined to have the support of a majority of delegates to the Democratic convention, who will vote in the coming weeks on the next nominee.
“It’s a done deal,” said John Morgan, a trial lawyer and major Biden donor, who had previously voiced his opposition to Harris leading the ticket. He said he was not sure that Harris could beat former president Donald Trump, would not be donating to her and was not sure if he would vote in November, but if he did he would probably vote for her.
He also observed the amount of money flooding into Democratic coffers at this point made his decision to withhold cash inconsequential.
“Whatever money I have would be like pouring coffee in a full coffee cup,” he said. “So it is what it is. Now we just hold our breath.”
The boom in Democratic giving also follows a flood of announcements by major Silicon Valley donors that they were going to spend big to back Trump as Biden struggled to allay concerns about his health. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen announced his support for Trump by saying Biden hadn’t made a big enough effort to build a relationship with the tech industry.
That criticism doesn’t apply to Harris at all, said Chris Kelly, a former Facebook chief privacy officer who ran against Harris for California attorney general in 2010 and is now a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings NBA team. He supports Harris’ run for president and plans to donate to her campaign. She is from the Bay Area and has a long history of interacting with and working with the tech industry, he said Tuesday. That makes people in Silicon Valley a lot more comfortable, Kelly said.
“Kamala Harris will have an open door and a willingness to reconsider some of the mistakes of this administration,” he said.
Parts of Harris’ old donor network, which has operated for years largely as a subset of Biden’s machine, held a donor call Monday that included multiple people from her 2020 presidential campaign’s finance committee.
“My sense is the donor community is so ready to get this done. We are so stoked and relieved,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a major donor in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone who feels otherwise,” she added. “Women are on fire.”
Way to Win, a Democratic donor network devoted to winning the House, Senate and White House this year, also reported a boost in enthusiasm, hinging in part on the expectation that Democrats once again could have a path to winning the more southern battlegrounds of Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
“We got people coming in who had not committed for this cycle. And people who have committed, committing more,” said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, a co-founder of the group. “A lot of people were saying the Sun Belt states were out of play. The Sun Belt is absolutely in play.”
Biden has cancelled campaign events he had scheduled for the coming weeks, though campaign officials say some may be rescheduled. Fundraisers that first lady Jill Biden planned to headline will now be hosted by Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman. The Harris campaign also reported a massive increase in volunteer sign-ups, with 58,000 people in the first 48 hours, a sign-up rate that is 232 times larger than the Biden campaign’s daily average.
ActBlue, the Democratic-leaning processing agent for most Harris campaign donations, reported raising almost US$47m in seven hours after Biden’s announcement on Monday. Since then, the ticker on the company’s website recorded about $67m in donations for all candidates and causes. Those totals are slightly below the record set on the site – US$70.6m on September 19, 2020, the day after US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.
A quarter-billion-dollar windfall over two days is enormous by almost any historical measure, though it is hard to compare directly with past elections because of changes to campaign finance law, federal limits and inflation. The US$100m co-ordinated campaign haul over less than two days compares favourably with the US$85m the Biden campaign reported raising over the entire month of May and is similar to the US$53m the Trump campaign reported raising in the 24 hours after his felony conviction in New York.
A smaller 2000 predecessor to FF PAC, called Future Forward USA Action, raised US$142m in that entire cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a group that tracks money in politics.
Looked at another way, the 1.1 million contributors in 41 hours account for 1.4% of the 81.3 million people who voted for Biden in the general election in 2020. The campaign reported that most of the donations came from new donors to the campaign this election cycle, suggesting an expanded base of potential return donors over the next 103 days.
One campaign adviser reported that even donors who had long been private detractors of Harris were opening their wallets to make significant contributions. The crushing sadness and fear of the past three weeks had been replaced by a frenzy of enthusiasm.
“It’s intense It’s bonkers. It’s everybody,” said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign fundraising. “This is why I love American politics. Just the adrenaline, the ups and downs. This has been the most intense roller coaster I’ve ever been on.”