A surge of donations to the newly rechristened Harris for President campaign is upending the 2024 money race yet again.
The vice president has amassed more than $100 million in her first few days as a candidate, the latest twist in a whipsaw fundraising cycle.
First, President Joe Biden opened a sizable donations lead beginning in 2023, only to see Donald Trump turn the tables and go on his own fundraising blitz in recent months once he secured the GOP nomination.
Now it appears that Kamala Harris is at least evening the score. Her new funds came, the campaign said, from 1.1 million unique donors. She also has amassed enough delegate commitments to win on the first nominating ballot, according to delegate trackers.
“I am grateful to President Biden and everyone in the Democratic Party who has already put their faith in me, and I look forward to taking our case directly to the American people,” Harris said in a statement touting her delegate total.
At the beginning of July, the formal Biden (now Harris) campaign had almost $96 million in the bank compared to $128 million for Trump. The totals were higher when counting additional groups like the national parties and other aligned organizations.
The Trump campaign has not provided a fundraising update in recent days.
The new money that flowed in this week is headed to the formal Harris campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and joint Democratic fundraising committees.
A wave of other donors — and possible lawsuits
The totals for Harris in the world of super-PACs — with their ability to accept unlimited donations —could be even more eye-popping.
A key super-PAC helping Democrats known as Future Forward has received a $150 million commitment in recent days, according to a Politico report.
Other mega-donors have quickly come on board. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman was Biden’s biggest donor and quickly endorsed Harris. So did Dmitri Mehlhorn, a former Hoffman colleague who is expected to remain influential in donor circles and was adamant in recent weeks that Joe Biden should stay in the race.
“With Scranton Joe stepping back, I cannot wait to help elect President Harris,” Melhorn quickly told Yahoo Finance just a few hours after Biden announced his withdrawal.
Top Hollywood donors are also quickly beginning to donate again after a pause in recent weeks, according to Deadline.
The wave of new money for Harris comes as Republicans may be gearing for an uphill legal fight to challenge whether she can access funds that were raised when Biden was atop the ticket. Republicans are also gearing up to challenge whether Kamala Harris’s name can appear on swing state ballots.
“In terms of a Republican attack, I assume that’s coming,” Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel for Campaign Legal Center, told Yahoo Finance this week of challenges to the Biden campaign funds, adding it could be a losing battle and slow to resolve.
Challenges must first be filed with the Federal Election Commission, rather than a court of law, and on Sunday FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey posted one federal campaign finance law that read “contributions made for the general election shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated …, or reattributed …, as appropriate.”
However, Ports said in the case of a Harris candidacy “this would work differently,” because there are more campaign laws at play.
If one of the two candidates bows out, she said, the additional laws seem to suggest Harris could keep the funds because the vice president and president share a campaign committee and campaign depositories, and Harris would be using the funds for the same purpose as Biden: to advance to the general election.
Cooksey, a Trump appointee who formerly worked for Sen. Ted Cruz, offered only a bit more insight in an NPR interview Monday, saying, “It’s really complicated, is the short answer,” and signaling his agency will likely soon begin a process to sort it out.
A race between 2 fundraising behemoths
The full fundraising picture — and the results of any legal challenges — won’t be known for weeks at least, but one thing appears certain: Neither side is likely to be short on funds in the 104 days between now and Election Day.
Donald Trump is no fundraising slouch and has raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for his formal campaign. Hundreds of millions more are coming to Trump-aligned groups. The former president has also made new inroads with an array of donor communities in recent months, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street to energy CEOs.
Trump has also shown fundraising power in recent months among small-dollar donors and could be further bolstered by billionaires.
He has gained financial backing from Wall Street figures like Blackstone (BX) CEO Steve Schwarzman and tech titans like Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk. Musk reportedly could be set to give a whopping $180 million to a Trump-aligned super-PAC before this election season is out.