As a group, the 16 major candidates for the Democratic Party 2020 presidential nomination as of March 31, 2019, raised a lot of money during the first quarter of 2019. In some instances it record breaking amounts, but the American media should have provided context for these figures.
Here’s what they failed to tell you: President Donald Trump is raising far, far, faaaaaaaaaaaaar more money during the 2020 campaign than he did during his 2016 campaign, when numerous Democrats and Republicans outraised him by an incredible amount of money. President Trump, in case Democratic Party partisans forgot, WON that election despite being badly outraised and outspent.
The second fact that is crucial for context is that while the $30.3 million Trump raised in the first quarter of 2019 is less than the 16 Democrats’ total of $79.1 million, or less than $5 million per candidate, Trump will be able to save most of the money he raises for the general election campaign while the Democrats will have to spend most of the money they raise competing against each other.
The Democrats’ fundraising numbers are NOT impressive, the liberal website Vox says in its article “7 winners from the first big presidential fundraising reports.”
“Trump is expected to easily win the GOP nomination (though he will face at least one challenger, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld),” the article says. “But perhaps the most encouraging sign for him is that individual candidates’ fundraising on the Democratic side remains comparatively tepid, and that the field as a whole remains divided.”
The bottom line is that Trump WON Round 1 of the 2020 presidential campaign fundraising race although he might have lost EVERY round of the 2016 presidential campaign fundraising race.
In the third quarter report for of 2015, Trump was NINTH with $3.9 million raised while Ben Carson was No. 1 with $20.8 million and was followed by Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Chris Christie.
In the fourth quarter report for 2015, Trump was fourth with $13.6 million. He trailed Carson ($22.6 million), Cruz, and Rubio. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders raised $68 million and $59.8 million respectively in the second half of 2015.
Trump’s fundraising continued to lag in 2016. A June 22, 2016, article in the New York Times entitled “Which Presidential Candidates Are Winning the Money Race” reported that Clinton had raised $334.9 million, Sanders $229.1 million, Bush $162.1 million, Cruz $158 million, Rubio $125 million, and Carson $76.7 million. Trump was SEVENTH with $67.1 million although he had already won the GOP nomination by that time and some of his foes had dropped out and stopped raising money months earlier.
After the election, Bloomberg.com reported that Clinton raised slightly less than $1.2 billion during the 2016 campaign while Trump had raised $646.8 million.
“He didn’t win the money race, but Donald Trump will be the next president of the U.S.,” noted the Bloomberg article “Tracking the 2016 Presidential Money Race.”
Trump Winning Money Race
Democrats should be worried about the 2020 presidential election. If they’re smart, they MUST be thinking ‘if he beat us while we raised hundreds of millions of dollars more than he did, how can we beat him when he is winning the money race?’
This time, of course, Trump will also dominate the air waves even more than he did in 2016 because he is the president. It’s also important that he is way, waaaaaaaaaay more organized this time than he was in 2016, when the Republican establishment opposed him.
Below are the figures for how much the 16 Democratic Party candidates have raised thus far from individual donors. The figures do not count money that some candidates transferred from previous campaign fundraising efforts such as Senate campaigns nor money from their own bank accounts.
Also remember that Joe Biden has not declared his candidacy and Congressmen Tim Ryan and Eric Swalwell declared their candidacies after the March 31 deadline for filing first-quarter fundraising reports with the FEC.
1. Bernie Sanders: $18.2 million
2. Kamala Harris: $12.0 million
3. Beto O’Rourke: $9.4 million
4. Pete Buttigieg: $7.1 million
5. Elizabeth Warren: $6.0 million
6. Amy Klobuchar: $5.2 million
7. Cory Booker: $5.0 million
8. Kirsten Gillibrand: $3.0 million
9. Andrew Yang: $2.4 million
10. Jay Inslee: $2.3 million
11. John Hickenlooper: $2.0 million
12. Tulsi Gabbard: $1.9 million
13. John Delaney: $1.7 million
14. Marianne Williamson: $1.5 million
15. Julian Castro: $1.3 million
16. Wayne Messam: $0.1 million
The totals show that President Trump has raised more money than the top two Democratic Party presidential fundraisers combined. He has also had considerable success with “small donors” — people who have donated $200 or less to his campaign. The $21.4 million he has raised from small donors means he is doing more than relying on the traditional Republican establishment of executives from big corporations.
The strength of Trump’s fundraising operation might mean that he will not only win Rounds 2, 3, 4, etc. but he has a very good chance of winning the 2020 presidential campaign fight.
