Trump’s conviction and Biden’s poor debate sent big money into the race
A PAIR of seismic events in May and June unleashed gushes of money into the presidential fundraising race — and that was before an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
New campaign-finance filings released this week revealed the degree to which Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts on May 30 and Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27 became seminal moments in the fundraising race.
Trump entered July in a better financial position than Biden — and Republicans were able to gain that upper hand largely because of Trump’s felony conviction.
Trump has supercharged the Republican National Committee since he became the party’s presumptive nominee in the spring. The RNC, which had as little as US$9 million in cash on hand at end of January, ended June with US$102 million in its coffers, nearly double the US$54 million it had at the end of May.
The committee’s cash increase is primarily a downstream effect of an enormous spike in small-dollar fundraising after Trump’s conviction, according to filings from campaign committees and data released earlier this week from the Republican fundraising processing firm WinRed. Trump and allied Republican groups raised roughly US$69 million from May 30 to May 31.
Biden’s best fundraising days of the race so far came — perhaps surprisingly — after his unsteady debate performance at the end of June. Biden and his committees raised roughly US$28 million over a two-day period between June 27, when the debate took place, and June 28.
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On Saturday, fresh filings with the Federal Election Commission showed that the Trump campaign itself had US$128 million on hand as of June 30, while the Biden campaign had about US$96 million.
The Trump campaign gained the lead thanks also to a big gap in spending levels. In June, the Biden campaign spent almost six times as much as the Trump campaign did. The Biden campaign has been aggressively investing in television advertising while the Trump campaign has largely ceded the airwaves.
The presidential race has, of course, been transformed since the figures were finalised June 30.
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The first three weeks of July walloped the Biden campaign in the fundraising sector, as calls grew for Biden to end his reelection bid, which he did on Sunday. And the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13 almost certainly propelled historic small-dollar fundraising, though the campaign has not released updated figures. NYTIMES
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