President Joe Biden's reelection campaign's hopes of entering the remaining months of the 2024 campaign season with more cash appear to be fading, with financial reports showing a windfall of cash for former President Donald Trump rolling in, including the millions coming in the wake of his felony convictions in New York City.
"There was the strategy of raising all this money on the front end so we could have this huge edge," a Biden bundler commented, Politico reported Monday. "The whole point of it was to come out with a sizable cash advantage and, you know, we’re now even and it’s June. … I have no other word for it other than 'depression' among Biden supporters."
Another bundler said the latest developments are "disappointing but not surprising."
Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $141 million in May, compared to $85 million for Biden's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and the Trump campaign also brought in $25 million more than Biden's in April.
A great deal of the Trump surge came after his May 30 convictions in New York City on charges of falsifying business records, which sparked enough donations from his supporters that the Republican Party's donations website, WinRed, became overwhelmed.
According to reports filed last week by the Federal Elections Commission, Trump's campaign and the RNC had a combined $171 million in cash on hand at the end of May, compared to $157 million for Biden and the DNC.
Part of the Trump surge came from huge checks rolling in from GOP megadonors, including the reclusive billionaire Timothy Mellon, who chipped in $50 million to the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc., the day after the former president's guilty verdict was announced in Manhattan in May.
Meanwhile, several Biden donors told Politico that they had planned for Trump's campaign to close the gap after he clinches the GOP nomination, noting that Mitt Romney was able to catch up to then-President Barack Obama in 2012 once he was nominated
Chip Forrester, co-chair of the Biden-Harris Southern finance committee, also pointed out that the Biden effort is spending more money to build "an unbelievable campaign structure in battleground states," but Trump has "done nothing."
Pennsylvania-based donor Alan Kessler commented that Biden's early money lead also allowed him to build the campaign infrastructure, but it's too late for Trump to catch up.
"Trump can’t get back February, March, April, and May, when the Biden campaign was getting boots on the ground," Kessler said.
May was the second-best fundraising month for the Biden campaign, aides said, including in grassroots funding and overall efforts.
"Our campaign, from the moment we’ve started, is more focused on what we’re doing with our resources, rather than trying to play a game of who’s raising what," Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told Politico. "That is where our investments are going, directly into field [operations]."
The Biden campaign also picked up large donations from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated $19 million to a pro-Biden super PAC and another $1 million directly to the campaign.
Biden's campaign also brought in almost $40 million last week after events in Los Angeles and Virginia, and Kessler said a fundraiser in Philadelphia, featuring first lady Jill Biden, has already been sold out.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.