President Joe Biden's campaign and affiliated fundraising committees powering the Democratic National Committee and state parties raised $97 million in the final three months of 2023, the campaign announced Monday, citing a significant closing boost from small-dollar donors.
Biden’s campaign also announced that his political machine had $117 million available to spend as 2024 begins, sending a signal about what the eventual Republican nominee will face just as the GOP begins its nominating process Monday with the Iowa caucuses.
The haul builds on the $72 million and the $71 million that Biden for President, the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees feeding state Democratic Party organizations raised in the second and third fundraising periods, respectively. Exactly how much the respective fundraising entities raised won't be known until the campaign files its year-end reports with the Federal Election Committee, which are due Jan. 31.
“This historic haul — proudly powered by strong and growing grassroots enthusiasm — sends a clear message: the Team Biden-Harris coalition knows the stakes of this election and is ready to win this November,” campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “Our democracy and hard-fought basic rights and freedoms are on the line in 2024, and these numbers prove that the American people know the stakes and are taking action early to help defeat the extreme MAGA Republican agenda again.”
The uptick in fundraising to end the year also coincided with the end of the Hollywood writers strike in late September. The president, Vice President Kamala Harris and other top surrogates didn't hold high-dollar events in Southern California during the nearly five-month standoff.
Since Biden’s announcement of his re-election campaign in late April, 1 million supporters have made 2.3 million donations, the campaign said, with 130,000 so-called sustaining donors contributing monthly. The average grassroots donation in the fourth quarter was $41.88, the campaign said.
The small-dollar giving accelerated as the GOP field challenging former President Donald Trump began to winnow, the campaign says. And a campaign spokesperson predicted that its fundraising haul would “lap” the GOP field of candidates “several times.”
There's no direct comparison to the Republican field to be made right now because the GOP candidates aren't fundraising in concert with the Republican National Committee or state parties yet. But they are spending significant cash on the nominating contest, and while Biden spent millions on advertising last year, he is already building up his accounts for the general election fight.
The Biden campaign's total cash on hand grew every quarter last year, as the campaign has more slowly scaled up its operations and focused its biggest expenditures on an early television blitz.
Some Democrats have expressed concern about the lack of infrastructure in battleground states. The campaign has said it is now beginning to expand state by state, with leadership now in place in the early-voting states on the Democratic primary calendar.
