Bernie Sanders announces fundraising haul amid slide in polls
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders raised $24 million in the second quarter of 2019; Peter Doocy reports from Coralville, Iowa.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders raised $18 million the past three months, his campaign reported on Tuesday.
The independent senator from Vermont -- who’s making his second straight White House run -- took in a total of $24 million during the second quarter of fundraising, which included $6 million Sanders transferred from other accounts. The campaign also revealed that they have around $30 million cash-on-hand.
But his fundraising is essentially flat -- the $18 million raised from grassroots contributions during the April through June period is slightly less than the $18.2 million Sanders brought in from his campaign’s launch in February through the end of March.
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While campaign manager Faiz Shakir touted that the fundraising number “demonstrates a campaign that is persistent, resilient, and strong,” the total was also slightly less than the $24.8 million campaign cash haul announced Monday by South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a top-tier rival for the Democratic nomination. Buttigieg’s haul was triple what he raised during the first quarter.
Sanders' figures will also likely be topped by former Vice President Joe Biden. The former vice president hinted two weeks ago that his campaign had raked in nearly $20 million since he declared his candidacy in late April, nearly a month into the second quarter of fundraising.
While Sanders' first-quarter total came from 525,000 donors, the Sanders campaign highlighted that there were nearly 1 million contributions in the second quarter.
Shakir emphasized that the number of contributors “demonstrates that it is a people powered campaign.”
He also touted that 99.3 percent of contributions were $100 or less and that the average donation was $18.
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The Sanders campaign took aim at both Biden and Buttigieg, who have held numerous fundraisers the past couple of months with top-dollar donors.
“While other candidates court big money at fancy fundraisers, this campaign is supported by teachers, retail workers, and nurses who are putting what little money they have behind the one candidate who can bring about the transformative change this country needs. Our strength is in numbers and we have a million person movement committed to this campaign who can give over and over again,” Shakir said.
“We’re very honored to have the working class movement all across America,” he added. “It is the kind of support we would take any day of the week over a cushy closed-door high-dollar fundraiser in New York City in which people east parmesan crusted salmon on toothpicks.”
Senior campaign adviser Jeff Weaver argued that “many of these candidates are over reliant on these $2,800 dollar checks that are coming in and those $2,800 checks, that’s a one-time donation. And they have to go out and look for another $2,800 donor. That’s something that our campaign will not have to do.”
“Unlike the high-dollar model, which tends to be front-loaded, the low dollar model actually accelerates over time as we get closer to election time,” he added.
And pointing to the historically large field of two-dozen Democratic White House hopefuls – compared with the 2016 Democratic nomination race which was essentially a two-person race between Sanders and eventual nominee Hillary Clinton – Weaver noted that “our low-dollar fundraising capacity has not been compromised by a large number of candidates.”
The campaign also pointed to their fundraising in the days after last week’s first round of Democratic presidential primary debates.
“There’s been moments I think when people have written off the campaign. One of those moments was after the debate,” Shakir said.
“In the moments after the debate we had a surge of fundraising into this campaign,” he said as he touted nearly 200,000 individual donations since the debate.
Sanders' announcement came hours after President Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee announced that combined they raised $105 million the past three months.
