The fundraising season for Joe Biden has begun. The president will seek a second term in 2024 and need a lot of money to do so. Therefore, last Friday, he organized an event emphasizing his central campaign messages to elected officials, governors and potential donors.
As his central campaign messages, Biden mainly emphasized the crusade with “MAGA Republicans” and his defense of abortion as a right, however, without naming Donald Trump, the Republican most likely to get the Republican nomination.
Attendees had the opportunity to hear firsthand what the main topics of the Biden-Harris ticket will be in 2024. “Here’s the bottom line. It’s very simple: ‘We need you. Our democracy needs you because it’s about our freedoms,’” the president said in his speech.
The reception, hosted at the Salamander Hotel in Washington DC, was not explicitly a fundraiser, although some potential Democratic donors attended it. The governors in attendance were Gavin Newsom of California, Wes Moore of Maryland and Phil Murphy of New Jersey. Maxwell Frost, the first member of Generation Z to make it to Congress, also made his presence felt in the crowd.
As State Senator Dick Harpootlian confessed to POLITICO, most attendees seemed to believe that Trump will be the eventual Republican nominee for president. “He’s a motivating factor. The two sort-of high-profile people are him and DeSantis, and that’s Trump and Trump-lite,” the Democrat added.
Biden set a record for fundraising in 2020
In the 2020 presidential election, Biden initially had trouble keeping up with the fundraising pace of his more progressive competitors such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. However, everything changed after he prevailed in the primaries.
The incumbent’s campaign, Biden for President, was the first to reach $1 billion in fundraising in 2020. Specifically, the number was as follows: $1,044,187,828. According to data from Open Secrets, the distribution of this figure was led by expenditures for media outlets ($839,103,028), followed by salaries ($56,737,587), “all other” ($45,849,597), administrative expenses ($42,665,376), “unclassifiable” ($39,021,089) and fundraising ($34,480,376).
The most significant contributor was Bloomberg LP, the U.S. financial advisory company whose CEO is Michael Bloomberg. Former Mayor of New York City, he competed against Biden for the Democratic nomination, particularly for the moderate vote on the inside.
The company contributed $93,848,522 for Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. The next highest contributor was Future Forward USA, which totaled donations of $61,127,271, while Asana came in third with a total of $45,941,503 for Biden for President.
