Biden and the Democrats raise $97 million to close out 2023 after a December fundraising blitz
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee said they raised more than $97 million in the final three months of last year, boosted by a star-studded fundraising blitz in December that came just as the political world’s attention shifted to the start of the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
The Biden campaign said Monday that it raised $235 million from its launch last April through the end of 2023 and ended the year with $117 million in cash — which it said was the highest total by any Democratic candidate at this point in history has gathered. bicycle. More than 520,000 donors made more than 926,000 contributions this quarter, the report said.
“This historic move – proudly driven by strong and growing popular enthusiasm – sends a clear message,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s reelection campaign manager, said in a statement. “Our democracy and hard-won fundamental rights and freedoms are at stake in 2024, and these numbers prove that the American people know what is at stake.”
The president has made defending democracy a centerpiece of his re-election campaign and has repeatedly labeled Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement as a grave threat to the country’s founding fathers. The Republican primaries begin Monday with the Iowa caucus, with Trump as the early frontrunner — and the Biden campaign noted that he and his top competitors have already spent $100 million on advertising in the early primaries alone.
Biden traveled to Pennsylvania on Friday and stopped at three stores to emphasize that his policies have helped grow the economy and boost small businesses. It was a change from the regular speeches he usually gives, designed to highlight the ways his economic plans have delivered strong employment — even while triggering inflation that worries voters.
Meanwhile, Trump and his top rivals, including former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, put out a call to potential caucusgoers last weekend as temperatures turned frigid in Iowa.
Since the launch of the Biden campaign, nearly 1 million supporters have made more than 2.3 million contributions, and 97% of all donations in the fourth quarter of 2023 were less than $200, with an average contribution totaling $41, 88, it announced. Those totals include donations to Biden’s political operation and to a network of joint fundraising arrangements with the national and state Democratic parties.
Biden’s campaign said December was his strongest fundraising month yet, surpassing a record set earlier in November. That pushed the final quarter of last year to surpass the July through September period, when Biden and his party reported raising more than $71 million.
According to the campaign, the president has held 110 fundraisers since launch, including 39 in the fourth quarter of last year alone. That included a series of fundraisers before the Christmas holidays that took him to Boston for a trio of events, including singer-songwriter James Taylor, and three days in California for gatherings with Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand, among others.
That fundraiser came after Biden, who often calls himself the “most pro-union” president in US history, previously stayed away from fundraising in Los Angeles for months during the writers and actors strikes. It was aimed at silencing some donors who had quietly grumbled that the president was not doing enough to replenish his campaign coffers ahead of the November elections, which are likely to be hard-fought and close.
Even with so much of the travel focused on fundraising, Biden campaign officials had tried to manage expectations. They said in December they hoped to raise about $67 million by the fourth quarter of 2023 — which would be consistent with year-end totals of previous Democratic candidates.
Instead, Biden’s latest win surpassed those of President Barack Obama, who along with the DNC raised a non-inflation-adjusted $68 million in the final three months of 2011, ahead of his successful re-election the following year. Trump’s campaign announced it would raise $46 million in the final quarter of 2019 and had $102.7 million on hand for a 2020 race that it ultimately lost to Biden — although the joint war chest with the Republican National Committee at the time was much more formidable.
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