Republican magnate and candidate Donald Trump outraised President Joe Biden for the second consecutive month in May, with an $81 million lead in donations while raises at record levels after his conviction for a serious crime.
The million-dollar battle for assistance funds becomes more acute with four months and a few days remaining until the November election. A few hours ago, Trump received a complete package of 50 million dollars from millionaire Timothy Mellon.
Biden, in turn, got $20 million from news and economic powerhouse and former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
Trump and his organization have preferred not to publish full details of the cash available. But a partial calculation revealed this week in Federal Election Commission documents showed that the Republican candidate managed a fund of $170 million.
Recall that Trump was a staggering $100 million behind Biden in early April. In two months, he cut that deficit in half. And for the first time, the mogul’s main campaign committee had more cash than the president: between $116.5 million and $91.6 million.
Avalanche of funds
The full accounting of both sides’ finances will be made public in federal filings next month. But the combination of the former president’s improved fundraising and the Democratic president’s increased spending on advertising appears to put both sides on track to enter the summer relatively close to financial parity.
“Yes, Trump is raising a lot more money now, and that should be scary,” said Brian Derrick, a strategist who founded a Democratic fundraising platform called Oath. “But at the end of the day, Biden has the funds he needs to run a really strong campaign.”
Trump has narrowed the gap by generating a flood of online donations after his criminal conviction in New York on May 30. In the minutes after the verdict, guilty of 34 felonies, contributions came in so quickly that they briefly overwhelmed the Republican.
Trump’s campaign has said it raised $53 million online in the first 24 hours and $70 million in the 48 hours after the verdict. The conviction also unleashed a flood of mega-donations, including that $50 million contribution from billionaire Mellon.
As the Republican primary concluded, the Biden campaign and its allies had argued that for all the president’s electoral vulnerabilities (persistent inflation, low approval ratings, lingering concerns about his age), a clear advantage would be cash.
Even if that lead has since evaporated, the Biden campaign says it used its early financial leadership to build a political infrastructure in battleground states that will pay dividends in November. On Thursday, the campaign announced that it had hired its 1,000th staff across 200 offices in those states.
Regarding the contingents, Dan Kanninen, director for Biden’s key states, maintained that “that was built over time and Donald Trump cannot recover it.”
But on the other hand, Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, argued that the Democrat wasted money on ineffective television advertising.
In a statement with very subjective and virulent nuances, he stated that “Trump’s record fundraising figures demonstrate that corrupt Joe Biden’s witch hunt, skyrocketing inflation and immigration at the border (with Mexico), illegal invasion of the border have united with the American people around the fact that another four years of Biden will mean the end of our country.”
undecided voters
However, money alone is rarely decisive in important races, such as the presidential race, because people are already well informed about the candidates. But some of this year’s most important voters appear to be those who have tuned out, and reaching them is what takes big fortunes.
For months, Trump and his allies simply didn’t have the money to reach these voters. While his path to the Republican nomination was not difficult, he emerged from the primary in a relatively poor financial situation compared to Biden, who had been saving money.
inero for almost a year.
But that slow start also gave Trump much more room to grow. In the weeks after his victory in the internal Trump formed a joint fundraising committee and the Republican base seems to have been greatly encouraged by his conviction.
Trump advisers say the fact that Biden has spent tens of millions of dollars on the six swing states without altering the trajectory of the race bodes poorly for the president’s chances in November.
But the president’s camp points out, on the contrary, that it has an advantage. A recent poll by the Fox network placed the head of state above the real estate magnate for the first time by a difference of 50% to 48%, an improvement of three points since last month.
For now, Biden is racing to replenish his coffers in June. He held a $30 million event in Los Angeles with popular former President Barack Obama and Hollywood stars, as well as a fundraising event at the home of Terry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia, with former President Bill Clinton among the attendees. , another influential figure in the party.
Fountain: The New York Times and writing of Clarion
