WASHINGTON (CN) — Far outpacing second-quarter fundraising by Republican candidates vying for the White House in 2024, President Joe Biden’s reelection team announced Friday it has raised more than $72 million since the launch of the campaign in April.
In addition to more than doubling the fundraising efforts of former President Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team says their totals beat those of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis "by more than 3:1.”
The DeSantis campaign launched in May, a month after Biden's and has raised only $20 million.
Trump’s haul between April and June tallied around $35 million, nearly double the $18 million that he brought in in the first quarter. Over 25% of what Trump raised in the first three months of the year came 24 hours after news broke in March about his indictment by a New York grand jury. Trump announced his run in January and claims he raised $4 million in the last 24 hours of the quarter.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meanwhile now have $77 million in cash on hand, according to a video statement by Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
Historically, Presidents Barack Obama and Trump have previously outraised Biden at this point in the cycle. While Trump and the Republican National Committee totaled $105 million in the second quarter of 2019, Obama and the DNC garnered $86 million in 2011. Both candidates had also formalized their candidacies a bit earlier in the year than Biden-Harris, however, giving them more time to fundraise.
According to the Biden-Harris campaign, more than 394,000 donors and 670,000 contributions cumulated to create Biden’s $72 million second-quarter haul. As Biden’s campaign is fully integrated with the Democratic National Committee, donations tallied include those to the DNC as well as all 50 state Democratic fundraising committees.
Touting the strength of its grassroots support, the campaign said that 97% of these donations were under $200; 30% of donors were new — and did not contribute to Biden in 2020 — and many were teachers, nurses and retirees.
Rodriguez spoke to the strength of the Biden-Harris’s campaign against their Republican opponents Friday.
“While Republicans are burning through resources in a divisive primary focused on who can take the most extreme MAGA positions, we are significantly outraising every single one of them — because our team’s strength is our grassroots supporters,” she said in a statement.
The Biden campaign has hosted 38 fundraising events since April. Biden’s campaign in 2020 raised more than $1 billion, with $700 million being small donor donations. The president’s team will submit a more detailed second-quarter fundraising report to the Federal Elections Commission by Saturday.
Biden is the clear frontrunner in the Democratic primary race. His two announced challengers are anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and author Marianne Williamson.
In going up for a second term, Biden, 80, has faced some concern about his age. He was the oldest president to be sworn into office at 78 years in 2021. The country's second oldest president was Donald Trump, 77, who was 70 years old when he was sworn in 2017.
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