Warren Reports Logging 2 Million Donations: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- Senator Elizabeth Warren, the progressive Democrat and one of the front-runners for her party’s presidential nomination, said Sunday her campaign has logged 2 million donations.

Warren has been one of the strongest fundraisers in the 2020 presidential campaign, despite eschewing the traditional high-dollar events many other candidates rely on. She had $25.7 million cash on hand at the end of the third quarter, trailing only Senator Bernie Sanders.

The financial strength of Warren and Sanders contrasts with the other Democratic candidate near the top of the polls, former Vice President Joe Biden, who spent money faster than he raised it the last few months and started October with less than $9 million in the bank.

Though Biden has criticized Warren for starting her presidential campaign with an injection of more than $10 million from her Senate fund-raising account, his lagging numbers have raised concerns about whether he’ll have the cash to compete as effectively in the critical months ahead.

Warren to Release Plan for Funding Health Care (4:31 p.m.)

Senator Elizabeth Warren announced on Sunday that “over the next few weeks” she will release the details of how she intends to pay for her most expensive policy proposal: Medicare for All.

“Right now, the cost estimates for Medicare for All vary by trillions and trillions of dollars, and the different revenue streams for how to fund it, there are a lot of,” the Massachusetts senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said during a town hall in Indianola, Iowa. “This is something I’ve been working on for months and months, and it’s got just a little more work until it’s finished.”

The candidate faced intense questioning at last week’s Democratic presidential debate in Ohio about whether middle-class taxes would increase to fund a plan that some experts estimate will cost about $30 trillion over a decade.

Warren has detailed the financing mechanisms in the majority of the proposals she’s released. But on health care, she has only promised that the wealthy and big corporations will pay the most while middle-class families will see lower overall costs.

When Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Warren’s progressive rival, released his Medicare For All bill in 2017, he didn’t initially include funding details. He announced plans for an “Extreme Wealth Tax” in September that would be used to pay for his programs such as Medicare for All.

Klobuchar Says She’d Be in Washington for Trial (1:19 p.m.)

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar said it would be her constitutional duty to be in Washington for any impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, rather than campaigning in early voting states for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Klobuchar was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday whether she’ll commit to participating in a Senate trial while other candidates who aren’t senators are out campaigning, even if it slows her momentum or a shot at the nomination.

“We will be there in Washington, if that is the schedule,” Klobuchar said. “We really don’t have a choice.”

Klobuchar said she “can do two things at once” and still reach out to people and have her husband and other surrogates campaigning for her, even if she’s in Washington.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has told GOP senators to be ready for an impeachment trial to start as soon as Thanksgiving, as Republicans privately discussed wrapping up the six-days-a-week trial by Christmas. -- Hailey Waller

Buttigieg Says Democrats Can’t Fight ‘With One Hand’ (1:19 p.m.)

Pete Buttigieg responded to criticism about his fund raising, which relies in part on the kind of closed-door events with big donors that rivals including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren have sworn off.

The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said that as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he knows about grassroots support and has received mostly small-dollar donations.

But he said Republicans will have a huge financial advantage, one that Democrats will struggle to overcome without “unilaterally disarming.”

“We can’t go into this fight against Donald Trump with one hand tied behind our back.,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign reported raising a combined $125 million in the third quarter, with $156 million cash on hand -- more than twice the amount that President Barack Obama’s re-election committees had at this point in 2011. -- Bill Allison

COMING UP

Elizabeth Warren will hold events in Iowa on Sunday.

Joe Biden has a fundraiser in Connecticut at the hosted by former Governor Ned Lamont.

To contact the reporter on this story: Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou in Washington at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann

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