Harris Hits Half-Billion-Dollar Record to Trounce Trump Fundraising
Her first four weeks as a presidential candidate have been a fundraising frenzy.
Marco Bello/Reuters
Kamala Harris raised an unprecedented haul of about $500 million in the first month of her candidacy, according to a report.
Four sources told Reuters the colossal amount had come in just four weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket on July 21. In that time, the vice president has already smashed fundraising records as donors have sought to give her campaign more firepower in a tight race against Donald Trump.
The Harris campaign said it raised $200 million in the first week following Biden’s withdrawal from the race, a dramatic reversal of the party’s fundraising fortunes during the closing stages of Biden’s candidacy. That $200 million figure was also more than the $138.7 million Trump’s campaign said it raised in the entirety of July.
By contrast, Harris’ team said they’d raised $310 million in July—a staggering figure that, according to her campaign, took the total amount raised by Harris and Biden to more than $1 billion. It’s the fastest a presidential campaign has ever hit the 10-figure mark in history, according to the campaign.
Heading into August, the Harris campaign had $377 million on hand—about $50 million more than the $327 million total cash on hand reported by the Trump camp.
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Harris has once again seized the fundraising lead for Democrats that the party lost in the wake of Trump’s May conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Amid the historic trial that Trump characterized as political persecution, Republican donors inundated the former president with support to the point that Trump wiped out Biden’s longstanding cash advantage.
Harris’ lightning takeover at the top of the Democratic ticket reinvigorated her party’s own donors, with her campaign taking $81 million in the 24 hours after Biden announced his withdrawal from the race on July 21. The Harris campaign said it was the biggest single-day total in American history.
Super PACs backing Trump are nevertheless still receiving strong support. Timothy Mellon, the conservative billionaire heir of the Mellon banking fortune, last month gave another $50 million to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again Inc. He’s given a total of $126.5 million to the PAC since 2022, according to The Washington Post, including $100 million in the last three months alone.
Mellon previously gave $25 million to a super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the independent candidate who, according to his running mate Nicole Shanahan, is considering ending his campaign to “join forces with Donald Trump.” Trump says he “probably would” consider Kennedy for a Cabinet job, which RFK Jr. has sought in exchange for endorsing the former president.
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