Disappointment and 'depression': Biden's biggest fundraisers watch their advantage vanish

Joe Biden’s campaign planned to bury Donald Trump in an avalanche of cash.

Instead, his allies are bracing for a slugfest without the benefit of a fatter wallet, as financial reports showed Trump outraising Biden in back-to-back months, hauling in huge sums after his 34 felony convictions and erasing Biden’s longstanding financial edge.

Democrats in recent days largely downplayed Trump’s new financial lead in the same way Trump’s allies had when Biden was running ahead in the money race — saying the president would have enough money to compete.

But privately, several Democratic strategists and donors were reeling.

“There was the strategy of raising all this money on the front end so we could have this huge edge,” said one Biden bundler, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The whole point of it was to come out with a sizable cash advantage and, you know, we’re now even and it’s June. … I have no other word for it other than ‘depression’ among Biden supporters.”

Another major Biden bundler, also granted anonymity, called the development “disappointing, but not surprising.”

In the 2024 money race, not only was Trump out-raising Biden, but he also had more cash on hand. And Republican megadonors, too, rolled out enormous checks for Trump in recent days, including $50 million from longtime GOP donor Timothy Mellon to a pro-Trump super PAC.

Several Biden donors insisted that they expected — and planned — for Trump to close the gap after he clinched the Republican nomination, comparing it to when Mitt Romney caught up to then-President Barack Obama in fundraising over the summer of 2012. Part of the disparity between the campaigns was that Biden was spending more heavily, building “out an unbelievable campaign structure in battleground states,” while “Trump has done nothing,” said Chip Forrester, co-chair of the Biden-Harris Southern finance committee.

“That early money counted because it allowed for Biden to build out all of these offices, which have been cranking along, and that's not something Trump can catch up on,” said Alan Kessler, a Pennsylvania-based donor. “Trump can’t get back February, March, April and May, when the Biden campaign was getting boots on the ground.”

The Trump campaign, for its part, has described its in-state infrastructure as “leaner,” relying far more heavily on outside groups to execute it.

Inside the Biden campaign, aides said that May was their second-best fundraising month of the campaign, both in its overall total and in grassroots fundraising, even without a major fundraising event. Like their donors, they pointed to their battleground staffing footprint, which includes 200 offices and a thousand staffers, as money well spent.

“Our campaign, from the moment we’ve started, is more focused on what we’re doing with our resources, rather than trying to play a game of who’s raising what,” Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in an interview with POLITICO. “That is where our investments are going, directly into field [operations].”

It wasn’t all bad news for Biden on the fundraising front. The Biden campaign saw its own fundraising rebound in May, after a weak showing in April. Biden also picked up a bump from former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who gave $19 million to a pro-Biden super PAC and gave a max-out donation of $1 million to the campaign this week.

The campaign raised nearly $40 million last week, after a glitzy Los Angeles event and another in northern Virginia. Kessler said a fundraiser featuring First Lady Jill Biden in Philadelphia, scheduled for Monday, is already sold out and “we’re putting people on the waitlist.”

And the Biden campaign suggested the most recent reports do not fully account for its financial standing. The campaign said it had $212 million in cash, based on pooled totals from their joint fundraising committees. The Trump campaign has not released its joint fundraising totals yet and neither can be verified until July, when those committees file with the Federal Elections Commission.

“I don’t think either one of these candidates is going to lose because of a lack of resources,” said Howard Wolfson, a top political adviser to Bloomberg. “I think they’ll have fully-funded campaigns that will have more than ample resources to get their message out.”

But for the first time in the general election campaign, Biden is running behind in the money race. In the reports filed Thursday night, Trump and the Republican National Committee were sitting on $116.5 million in cash, while Biden and the Democratic National Committee have $91.6 million in the bank.

Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said, “From fundraising, polling, crowds at public events or enthusiasm across the board with America’s voters, there is more and more evidence that the momentum of President Trump coming out of a historic primary election season is growing as we move to November. The latest surge in fundraising and wiping out the campaign cash advantage in May reflects this.”

Though Democrats argued Trump’s May haul featured a one-time-only event with his conviction that juiced small-dollar donors, that may not be the case with his sentencing scheduled for July, which could trigger another cascade of cash. Democrats also pointed to the upcoming June 27 presidential debate as a moment that could boost online donations and boost grassroots fundraising.

But there is a bubbling frustration among some Democrats that donors who wrote big checks for Biden in 2020 are keeping their wallets closed now. At least two bundlers raised concerns about donors “who are sitting on the sidelines,” said one of those donors, who was granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly.

“We need some more [donors] to come online, and I think that’ll happen,” said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of American Bridge, one of the major pro-Biden super PACs. “We need everyone on the field, engaged and doubling down from what they did in 2020. There are new people stepping up to the plate on their side, and we have some new people on our side.”

On Trump’s grassroots donors, Biden communications director Michael Tyler in a statement to POLITICO attacked the former president for “suckering small-dollar donors into giving their hard-earned money to pay off the legal fees of a convicted felon — and not spending a dime talking to actual voters.”

Still, even if the dollar amounts Trump raised are not spreading panic in Democratic circles, they are deeply troubled by the support those contributions represent.

“What Democrats should worry about is that it’s even within distance — that the money is going on at Trump’s side at such a clip,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist based in New York. “You would think a guy who’s convicted of crimes would be nowhere, but he’s everywhere financially. And that is a real problem for Democrats.”

He said, “The challenger shouldn’t even be close on the money side, especially a guy who’s convicted of felonies. How is this possible, is what the Democrats should be asking. … That’s what they should be worried about.”

Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.