Biden and his allied groups have raised more money than Trump and his allies have over the course of the general-election contest. But the surge in post-conviction donations to Trump’s effort — captured in part in May reports filed to the Federal Election Commission on Thursday — has the potential to dramatically reshape the presidential race.
The Biden campaign’s long-standing fundraising lead allowed his campaign to build a much larger footprint than Trump’s and to significantly outspend Trump’s effort on the airwaves. The latest fundraising results put Trump in a position to build a bigger operation and air more television ads.
The full picture of the financial strength of each campaign’s effort will not be clear until later this summer, when their allied committees are required to file reports. But at the end of May, the Trump campaign and the RNC had a combined $171 million in cash on hand, surpassing the Biden campaign and the DNC’s combined total of $157 million, according to reports filed late Thursday.
Trump’s advisers have attributed May’s surge in donations to donors’ desire to demonstrate their loyalty to the former president after his felony conviction. The campaign claimed it raised $53 million online in the 24 hours after the verdict, but verifying those totals was impossible Thursday because WinRed — the platform that many small donors use to contribute to Republican campaigns — will not file its FEC report for this period until July.
The Trump-allied super PAC MAGA Inc. — which has been the main vehicle for pro-Trump advertising on the airwaves — took in an eye-popping $50 million donation from transportation executive Timothy Mellon a day after Trump’s conviction, giving the former president’s allies ample resources to drive his message at a moment when he is leading Biden in many battleground state polls.
The super PAC plans to spend $100 million in paid media through Labor Day, it announced in a recent memo obtained by The Washington Post.
MAGA Inc. raised $69 million in May — its best fundraising month of the cycle — and reported $94 million in cash on hand. Its largest donation was the $50 million from Mellon, who previously gave $25 million to the group and $25 million to a super PAC supporting independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump and the Republican National Committee, who began fundraising jointly when Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, raised about $106 million in May, more than their previous monthly tallies, according to the new FEC filings. Biden and the DNC raised a combined $59 million, similar to their previous sums.
Overall, the Biden team said it had $212 million in cash on hand as of May 31.
In addition to the donation from Mellon, MAGA Inc. also received $10 million from Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, powerful donors to conservative causes, and $5 million from Kelcy Warren, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, the builder of the Dakota Access pipeline.
FF PAC, an independent super PAC boosting Biden’s reelection effort, reported raising more than $39 million in May, an increase from earlier months, and spending just $4 million. But it was outraised by MAGA Inc., and for the first time this cycle now has slightly less cash on hand than the Trump-supporting super PAC.
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg gave $19 million to FF PAC on May 30, according to filings. He also gave the Biden Victory Fund, a joint effort of the campaign and other Democratic committees, the maximum amount of $929,600, according to people familiar with the donations.
Biden got a head-start raising money with the Democratic National Committee and other coordinated committees while Trump was still fending off Republican challengers during the GOP primaries.
Biden’s flush coffers allowed him to spend freely on television ads as his campaign tries to bolster his support among key constituencies, including Black and Latino voters, who are expressing less enthusiasm about his campaign than they did in 2020.
Biden’s campaign says it has also opened more than 200 offices and hired a staff of 1,000 people. It has already aired more than $65 million in television ads, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
The Trump campaign says it has dozens of offices across the battleground states that are operated in coordination with the Republican National Committee, but it has declined to detail the scale of its operation other than to say they have an extensive paid and volunteer operation that is “expanding daily.” The Trump campaign had not aired a single general-election ad on television as of Thursday, according to AdImpact.
Trump campaign advisers have said that they are building a leaner, more efficient operation than in previous cycles and that they will rely on outside groups to supplement their ground game. But Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground states director, pointed to the infrastructure discrepancy on Thursday.
“With just over four months until the election, Donald Trump couldn’t match our battleground infrastructure if he tried,” Kanninen said in a statement. “While Trump’s team is desperately trying to spin their lack of infrastructure as ‘strategic,’ the bottom line is that Donald Trump cannot buy back the time he has lost — and invisible campaigns don’t win.”
Jason Miller, an adviser to Trump, pointed to the former president’s edge in battleground polls — arguing in a statement Thursday that “what Biden could use is 1000 more votes in states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, because he’s losing to President Trump in all of them!”
Fundraising was less of a focus for Biden during April and May after he made a major push in March, raising more than $90 million. At that juncture, the broader Biden effort had about $192 million in cash on hand, which was nearly double the cash that the Trump campaign and the RNC reported in their accounts at the end of that month.
Though Trump outpaced Biden in fundraising in April, his legal bills have strained his political operation as he has defended himself in four criminal cases. He has paid many of his legal bills for himself and some of his associates through a leadership PAC known as Save America, which typically gets a $5,000 cut from contributions of $11,600 or more to the Trump 47 committee.
Filings Thursday showed that Save America raised just $4,337 in May but spent $4.3 million, finishing the month with under $4.5 million cash left to spend. Legal bills accounted for 85 percent of May spending by the PAC, which also racked up $862,000 of unpaid legal bills.
The party committees battling for control of the House and Senate also reported their latest numbers on Thursday night. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reported $78.8 million in cash on hand after being narrowly outraised by the National Republican Congressional Committee, which reported $64.7 million in cash at the end of the month.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reported $48.3 million in cash on hand to the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s $41 million. The DSCC raised $10.6 million in May, while the NRSC raised $12.4 million.
Susie Webb contributed to this report.
