Across the Democratic Party, elected officials, donors and strategists have fretted about Biden’s ability to defeat former president Donald Trump after the president faltered in Thursday’s debate. No prominent Democrat has called for him to step down, though many have had conversations about whether the president should continue to run. Donors have been among the most concerned about Biden’s performance, leading some to question whether he will be able to continue raising the funds necessary to run a robust campaign operation.
But the campaign has aggressively touted its fundraising success since the debate as part of its effort to temper anxieties, saying it raised $38 million in the four days since the faceoff in Atlanta. Officials said Thursday was their best grass-roots fundraising day of the campaign, and Friday was the second-best day. The campaign describes grass-roots fundraising as money that comes in online and via mail vs. cash that is raised at high-dollar fundraisers.
The Trump campaign has not yet reported its second-quarter numbers, and the full picture of the financial strength of each campaign’s effort will not be clear until July 15, when their allied committees are required to file reports. But after Biden opened a wide financial advantage over Trump in the early months of the campaign, the former president closed the gap significantly in May.
Last month, the main Trump campaign committee and the Republican National Committee reported raising over $106 million, surpassing the main Biden committee and the Democratic National Committee’s combined total of $60 million, according to reports filed last month. Those totals did not include funds raised for candidates’ joint fundraising committees, which file on a different schedule.
“Our Q2 fundraising haul is a testament to the committed and growing base of supporters standing firmly behind the President and Vice President and clear evidence that our voters understand the choice in this election between President Biden fighting for the American people and Donald Trump fighting for himself as a convicted felon,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
The campaign said nearly two-thirds of the funds raised in June came from grass-roots donors, and nearly half of the grass-roots donations following the debate came from first-time donors. The campaign said it has opened more than 200 campaign offices and hired more than 1,000 staff across the battleground states and spent $50 million on paid media in June alone.
On Monday, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, held a call to reassure more than 500 donors after many spent the days since the debate panicked about the president’s campaign.
She acknowledged that the debate did not go as they had hoped and said they all understood the campaign has significant work to do, according to people on the call. But she also reminded the donors of Trump’s challenges and said the campaign did not believe the contours of the race had been altered by the debate.
Michael Scherer and Matt Viser contributed to this report.
