By President Biden raised more than $72 million in the second quarter of 2023 for his reelection effort, his campaign announced Friday.
The figure accounts for all money raised by the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties participating in a joint fundraising committee since Biden launched his campaign for president in late April through June 30. The campaign said it has $77 million cash on hand.
Biden vastly outraised Republicans running for president during the second quarter, in part because individuals can give larger sums to the DNC than they can to individual campaign accounts. Individual contributions to political campaigns are capped at $6,600 whereas individuals can give up to $929,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, which includes the campaign, the DNC and state parties.
Former president Donald Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination, raised more than $35 million in the second quarter, his aides said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) raised $20 million in the same period for his presidential campaign, whereas Never Back Down, the governor’s super PAC playing an expansive role in supporting his bid, has raised $130 million since March. Most of that money was from a transfer from a Florida political committee once controlled by DeSantis.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) raised $6.1 million whereas Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, said her campaign raised $4.3 million in the second quarter. Other Republican candidates have not yet disclosed their fundraising hauls, though they are required to report their numbers to the Federal Election Commission on Saturday.
The Biden campaign said that 97 percent of donations were less than $200, and the average grass-roots contribution was $39. It also touted that 30 percent of the donors were new Biden supporters since the 2020 campaign. In total, the campaign said it had more than 394,000 donors.
In addition to benefiting from bigger campaign limits, Biden is not facing a competitive primary, allowing him to stockpile cash until the general election. Republicans, meanwhile, are engaged in a bruising primary campaign with a dozen declared candidates.
“While Republicans are burning through resources in a divisive primary focused on who can take the most extreme MAGA positions, we are significantly outraising every single one of them — because our team’s strength is our grass-roots supporters,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
Still, some Democrats have been underwhelmed by Biden’s fundraising operation thus far. People close to the campaign said they have struggled with online fundraising, particularly in the days after Biden officially declared his candidacy. Moreover, some donors have lamented the fact that the campaign has not officially hired a national finance director to oversee the fundraising efforts. The campaign has only hired a handful of full-time staffers, relying heavily on existing infrastructure at the DNC.
After a relatively quiet start, Biden went on a cross-country fundraising blitz in June, bringing in millions of dollars from high-dollar donors with stops in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
In 2011, President Barack Obama raised $86 million in the second quarter after similarly announcing his reelection bid in April, though earlier in the month than Biden did. Trump and the Republican National Committee raised $105 million in the second quarter of 2019.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the campaign’s national co-chairs, said that the fundraising was “a blockbuster result” and that if Biden had been a candidate for as many days as Obama was in the second quarter of 2011, the current president would have raised roughly $96 million. Obama announced his reelection campaign on April 4, 2011, whereas Biden jumped into the race on April 25.
“This is unprecedented support,” Katzenberg said. “There is an amazing organization that is actually in place and did an amazing job in firing up his supporters.”