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With far less money than anticipated, campaign officials are scrambling to address a severe financial disadvantage against Joseph R. Biden Jr., producing something of an internal blame game.
President Donald Trump's campaign has far less money than advisers had once anticipated for the final stretch of the presidential election, as rosy revenue projections failed to materialise, leaving aides scrambling to address a severe financial disadvantage against Joe Biden at the race's most crucial juncture.
To close the budgetary shortfall, Trump has slashed millions of dollars in previously reserved television ads and detoured from the battleground states that will decide the election for a stop in California last weekend to refill his campaign coffers. He has also tried to jump-start his online fundraising with increasingly aggressive tactics, sending out as many as 14 email solicitations in a day.
But Biden still entered October with nearly triple the campaign money as Trump — US$177 million to US$63.1 million — and is leveraging that edge to expand the battleground map just as Trump is forced to retrench.
Despite raising more than US$1.5 billion in tandem with the Republican Party since 2019, Trump is now in the same financial straits as he was four years ago, when Hillary Clinton had roughly double the money he did. The financial pinch has engulfed his advisers and party officials in something of an internal blame game after years of bragging about their fundraising prowess, according to current and former campaign and administration officials. Republican allies, meanwhile, are wondering where all the money went.
"Campaigns that are trailing two weeks before the election, there is always a lot of finger pointing," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former adviser on Senator Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign. "And asking where the money went is always the first question."
Last week, senior Trump campaign officials huddled with the Republican National Committee leadership in Washington, DC, to hash out spending plans for the race's final days, a discussion that included the possibility of taking out a loan or delaying payment on some bills past Election Day to fully fund operations, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perhaps nothing underscores how acute and unexpected the budget situation is for Trump as much as his television ad budget. His cash on hand entering October was US$40 million less than the US$104.4 million he had previously reserved in television ads for the final five weeks, according to Advertising Analytics data. So earlier this week, Trump's campaign and the RNC announced that the party would begin funding coordinated ads in many key states, a move that lessens the financial squeeze on Trump.
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Overall, the data show Trump's TV ad spending has shrunk by US$23 million since September 20. In that same time period, Biden has expanded his reservations by US$99 million.
"Every campaign makes fall ad reservations months in advance and adjusts them as Election Day approaches — including the Biden campaign," said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign's communications director, who added that a final $55 million push announced this week with the RNC was "a 40 per cent increase over our initial plans."
"The president will have all the resources he needs to win reelection," he added.
Top Trump officials are banking on the party's investment in door-knocking and ground operations to lift the president, especially after Biden spent months forgoing such activities because of the pandemic.
After fears of a looming cash crunch first surfaced last month, Trump wrote on Twitter that "if more money is needed, which I doubt it will be," he would "put it up!" Yet Trump has so far donated nothing to his reelection campaign, even as it has spent millions on his private businesses, and some top aides are reluctant to directly request that he dip into his own bank account.
He is still racing to collect cash. On Thursday, Trump will headline a fundraiser with major donors before the final presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee. He took a trip to California last weekend. And last month he flew to his Bedminster club in New Jersey to collect checks before the September fundraising deadline, even after a top aide, Hope Hicks, had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Trump's campaign is not broke. The US$63.1 million he had on hand entering October is nearly what Clinton had four years ago. The campaign said no loans or deferrals had occurred this time. The problem is that his campaign initially presumed it would have far more money, and Bill Stepien, who replaced Brad Parscale as campaign manager over the summer, has spent recent months imposing cost-control measures to prevent a bigger shortfall.
And being outspent in the final stretch once again — this time as an incumbent — was part of what the Trump campaign was initially built to avoid.
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Advertise with NZME.At the core of the financial troubles for Trump is what kind of funds his campaign and the party have in the bank. He announced that he entered October with US$251 million combined with the party — seemingly a huge amount. But much of that money is tied up in party accounts and cannot legally be used to fund most core campaign operations. The Biden campaign and party entered October together with US$432 million.
To help inject more money into the campaign itself, Trump aides and the RNC quietly revised the formula for sharing proceeds from its joint committee for small donations, bumping Trump's campaign share from an initial 75 per cent last year to 95 per cent as of August.
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The president calls his campaign funds "my money," according to current and former administration officials. In Trump's orbit, Parscale worked particularly closely with Ronna McDaniel, the party chairwoman, and Stepien's relationship with her is seen as less close, with last week's meeting aimed to bridge any divide.
In private, Trump has continued to blame Parscale for spending decisions, despite the fact that the former campaign manager has said he made them all with the approval of the Trump family. Parscale's allies argue he has been unfairly scapegoated for spending signed off on by other officials.
Parscale has told former colleagues he believed the campaign needed to consistently stay on television through Election Day, and that he had a plan he was executing, and wasn't simply winging it.
Others working with the campaign have said Parscale had no clear overall budget plan that was relayed to top officials, and that expenditures were simply approved case by case.
How Biden, who had struggled to raise money during the primary, wound up so far ahead of Trump is a testament to his own campaign's historic fundraising, both among small donors online and big donors writing US$100,000-plus checks, as well as the fervent desire of Democrats to send Trump packing.
Trump's hauls are big compared to past races, too. The US$247.8 million he raised in concert with the party in September would have been a record before 2020. That high level of fundraising has raised questions about his team's spending habits, given the current cash situation.
The Trump campaign and the RNC have been opaque about some of the US$1.2 billion spent since 2019. About half the money, more than US$611 million, went to a single limited liability company, American Made Media Consultants, linked to Trump officials and created to place television and digital ads. It was the subject of a recent complaint for intentionally obscuring the real destination of the money, which has included payments to the partners of Trump's adult sons, Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Under Parscale, the Trump campaign had promised that heavy early spending would build a massive trove of email addresses and phone numbers that would pay off many times over.
But new Federal Election Commission filings vividly show the strain on Trump's fundraising operation and the extent to which his early and much-hyped investments in online fundraising have stalled. In the last three months, Trump's main fundraising committee with the RNC to raise small contributions burned through money at an alarmingly high rate, spending more than 75 cents of every dollar it raised — US$181 million spent to raise US$235.7 million.
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The Trump campaign has been criticized for spending heavily earlier in 2020, including on a pricey Super Bowl ad nearly nine months before Election Day, and for ads that aired during the spring and summer months, before voters were paying close attention.
In October 2019, the Trump campaign made an expensive gambit a year out from the election, airing an ad nationally during Game 7 of the World Series. It was a financial show of force and the campaign declared it was "on offense."
A year later, as millions of Americans were voting, it was the Biden campaign that seized the World Series stage. On Tuesday it debuted a minute-long national ad narrated by actor Sam Elliott that went viral on social media.
Trump's campaign and his shared party committees continue to spend on Trump properties, including one September payment to the Trump Hotel Collection of US$640,476.
The campaign itself also spent more than US$1 million on companies that provide chartered plane services in September, even though Trump travels exclusively on Air Force One. Some of the payments, which the campaign did not answer questions about, were marked as "facility rental."
When Trump himself travels on Air Force One for political travel, the campaign must reimburse taxpayers for its use. As of the end of September, the single largest debt that Trump's campaign owed was to the Treasury Department: US$670,000.
Written by: Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman
Photographs by: Anna Moneymaker, Doug Mills and Mark Makela
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES