Sanders Raised $18 Million for 2020 Campaign in Second Quarter
Sanders Raised $18 Million for 2020 Campaign in Second Quarter
(Bloomberg) -- Senator Bernie Sanders raised $18 million for his presidential bid in the second quarter of the year, according to his campaign, slipping from his perch as the biggest fundraiser among the Democratic presidential contenders.
The Vermont Senator got donations from 1 million contributors, with an average pledge of $18 and almost all of the contributors giving $100 or less, campaign manager Faiz Shakir told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. The campaign also transferred $6 million from other accounts and had almost $30 million cash on hand.
“The number from our perspective demonstrates a campaign that is persistent, resilient and strong,” Shakir said.
Sanders’s total roughly matched what he took in between January 1 and March 31, which had him leading the pack of Democratic candidates then in the race. But this time he’s trailing Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who reported raising $24.8 million in the second quarter.
Candidates are due to officially report second-quarter totals to the Federal Election Commission on July 15. Some campaigns voluntarily announce the amount they raised ahead of the deadline to demonstrate the depth of their support.
Vice President Joe Biden, the front-runner in the race, didn’t launch his presidential bid until late April and hasn’t announced any totals for the second quarter. Nor have Senators Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, the other top candidates in the contest.
Earlier today, President Donald Trump’s campaign manager said that Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $105 million during the second quarter of the year and had $100 million cash on hand.
Shakir deflected questions about Buttigieg’s bigger fundraising haul, pointing to Sanders’s focus on small-dollar giving versus a mix that also includes big-money donors. Buttigieg has received support from some top Democratic fundraisers, as have several other candidates.
“There are other candidates out there who are intentionally making the decision to go into closed door fundraisers and solicit money from high-end bundlers in the corporate executive suite of America,” Shakir said.
Senior Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver said that candidates relying on $2,800 donations, the maximum amount an individual can give under federal law, end up frontloading their support, since donors can only give that amount once. Sanders’s small-dollar donors can continue to give throughout the primaries.
“The low dollar model actually accelerates over time,” Weaver said. “It sets the campaign up for success in terms of having the resources we need in the very frontloaded calendar that we have for the primaries and caucuses this year.”
In the first quarter, Buttigieg raised $4.5 million of his $7 million total from small-dollar donors, those giving $200 or less. His campaign didn’t announce how much of its support came from donors giving smaller amounts in the last three months.
Sanders’s most frequent second-quarter donations by employer came from Walmart Inc. workers, Shakir said. Sanders in early June took his campaign to the annual shareholders meeting of the nation’s largest employer, demanding that directors of Walmart give a seat on their board to an hourly worker.
Sanders received 200,000 individual donations since he participated in last Thursday’s presidential debates in Miami, Shakir said. He said that on June 30, the final day of second-quarter giving and just days after the debates, the campaign saw its second biggest daily fundraising draw when it raked in $2 million.
To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;Bill Allison in Washington DC at ballison14@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum
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