If it’s MONDAY … New fundraising reports show state of GOP presidential campaigns and Biden’s re-election … White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds a briefing at 3 p.m. ET … A heat wave hitting the Southern U.S. continues … Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose launches Senate run … and No Labels unveils policy platform in New Hampshire as it weighs third-party presidential bid.
But FIRST … Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in a little bit of trouble.
That’s the big takeaway from second-quarter campaign fundraising reports filed over the weekend, which shed new light on the GOP presidential primary.
DeSantis raked in an impressive $20.1 million in the first six weeks of his campaign, but a look under the hood showed why some warning lights are flashing.
Nearly 70% of his donors have already contributed the maximum amount to his campaign, meaning he can’t go back to them for more money. And he doesn’t appear to have a large base of small-dollar donors — just 14% of his haul came from donations of $200 or less.
That could become a problem if DeSantis wants to continue to fund a sprawling campaign — his 92 paid staff was by far the largest of any campaign so far, but news broke Saturday evening that DeSantis fired about a dozen of them to cut costs.
Yet even with those struggles, the reports reinforced what we’ve seen in national polls: Trump and DeSantis are in a league of their own.
No other candidate came close to matching their second-quarter hauls. Just one, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, cracked double digits, and that’s because the wealthy businessman loaned his campaign $10 million.
That’s in part because the GOP establishment hasn’t coalesced around a single non-Trump candidate. Wall Street executives spread out their donations between DeSantis, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, according to CNBC’s Brian Schwartz.
Trump ended June with the largest campaign war chest in the GOP primary with $22.5 million left to spend on the race. While Scott ended the quarter with almost as much money in his campaign account, he’s spending more money than he’s taking in, (he built his nest egg while running for Senate last year, not from donors giving to him as a presidential candidate).
So, yes, DeSantis may be stumbling. But he’s still Trump’s toughest challenger.
Data Download: The number of the day is … $19.9 million
That’s how much President Joe Biden raised into his campaign committee in the second quarter as he slowly ramps up his campaign.
The president had just four staff members on the payroll by the end of June, and his campaign spent just $1.1 million (by comparison, Trump spent more than $9 million and DeSantis spent almost $8 million).
Biden’s filing, like DeSantis’, was a good reminder why we preach caution around campaign finance deadlines. While Biden and the Democrats spent Friday spiking the football on a combined $72 million haul between the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state/territorial parties, the late-Saturday night filing showed Biden’s campaign itself only directly raised a little more than a quarter of that.
That’s significantly less than the $46 million former President Barack Obama’s campaign raised during his first quarter running for re-election, despite changes in campaign finance practices and law allowing Biden to raise larger sums.
That said, Biden is working hand-in-glove with the national party this cycle, and he’ll benefit greatly from that cash being spent up-and-down the ballot.
Other numbers to know
219: How many House lawmakers voted in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual defense policy bill, on Friday. Four Democrats crossed party lines to support the bill, while four Republicans voted against it.
6: The number of weeks of pregnancy after which abortion is banned in Iowa, after GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a ban into law Friday during the conservative Family Leadership Summit.
More than 4: The number of years in jail that a Jan. 6 rioter who stole a photo of civil rights activist and former Congressman John Lewis from then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was sentenced to.
$85,000: The amount that embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., spent from campaign funds to repay part of a personal loan he gave his campaign.
$20 billion: The value of investments in clean energy the Biden administration announced on Friday.
7: The number of House Democrats circulating a letter condemning remarks Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., made at a progressive conference, calling Israel “a racist state,” NBC News’ Sahil Kapur reports.
1,300: The number of flights that were canceled across the U.S. amid severe storms in the Northeast.
Eyes on 2024: No Labels releases platform for possible presidential bid
The size of the third-party vote remains a major x-factor in next year’s presidential race, and No Labels is taking a step forward on Monday in advancing a third-party bid.
The group is holding a town hall event at St. Anselm College Monday evening in New Hampshire to tout its “Common Sense” policy platform, which was released over the weekend.
According to the New York Times, the platform includes “poll-tested proposals, some bland and others that would require major shifts for both parties.” Some of the highlights include offering a path to citizenship for so-called DREAMers, undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children; implementing universal background checks on gun purchases; and supporting renewable energy but allowing domestic fossil fuel production to continue.
The platform hedges on the issue of abortion, stating that it is “too important and complicated an issue to say it’s common sense to pass a law — nationally or in the states — that draws a clear line at a certain stage of pregnancy,” that section concludes,” per the Times.
And while No Labels is hosting the Monday event to highlight its new platform, the focus will also be on the headliners: former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
Manchin has not ruled out joining the No Labels presidential ticket as he also weighs running for re-election to the Senate next year. And he could have a Republican counterpart. Former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan told the New York Times that he would consider joining a ticket as well if former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are the two major parties’ nominees.
“If it gets to the point where three-quarters of the people in America don’t like the choices, we might have to do something to put the country first,” Hogan said. “I’ve always said I put the country before party, so it’s something I wouldn’t reject out of hand.”
In other campaign news …
Conservative confabs: GOP presidential hopefuls gathered at two major events over the weekend. Trump was the star of the show at Turning Point Action’s conference for young conservatives, where former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez were booed and heckled, per the New York Times. On Friday Trump skipped the Family Leadership Summit, a gathering of Christian conservatives, where former Fox News host Tucker Carlson grilled the presidential contenders, per NBC News’ Adam Edelman.
Debatable: Trump told Fox News on Sunday that he has not decided if he will participate in the first GOP primary debate, but he said, “When you have a big lead, you don’t do it.”
Veepstakes: DeSantis said he would consider picking Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds as his running mate if he wins the GOP nomination.
Coming into focus: NBC News’ Jillian Frankel and Alex Tabet sat in on a focus group of 18 evangelical Christian voters in Iowa last week and found that while they are still Trump fans — and believe he won the 2020 election — they’re not sold on his comeback bid.
The Future outside effort: Biden and his team are “elevating” the super PAC Future Forward as the top outside group supporting his re-election, per the New York Times.
Pro-Trump: Trump appears to have solid support among Cuban Americans, NBC News’ Aaron Franco and Morgan Radford report from Miami.
An adverse event: After the New York Post published video of Robert Kennedy Jr. apparently saying that it’s possible Covid had been “ethnically targeted” because “it attacks certain races disproportionately,” he put out a statement saying that “I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”
More candidates in Ohio: Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose is jumping into the Ohio Senate race, and the crowded primary running to win the right to face Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Stubborn as a buffalo: NBC News’ Scott Wong and Sahil Kapur write about how a narrow victory in the 2022 midterms hasn’t convinced Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert to change her tune.
ICYMI: What ELSE is happening in the world:
A lawyer representing President Biden’s son, Hunter, sent a cease-and-desist letter to former President Donald Trump accusing him of defamation and incitement.
The Secret Service closed its investigation into who brought a small packet of cocaine into the White House without conducting interviews, NBC News’ Julia Ainsley reports.
UPDATE (June 15, 2023, 10:25 a.m. ET): This story has been updated to more clearly clarify South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott’s second-quarter campaign spending.
