Joe Biden raised $21.5 million from his late April campaign launch through the end of June, his campaign announced Wednesday, trailing South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg‘s $24.8 million second-quarter fundraising haul.
While the Biden campaign tried to spin the numbers as a success, calculating he had “raised more money per day than any other presidential campaign” in the 66 days in the quarter, they fell short of at least one of his major rivals despite a punishing schedule of fundraising events.
The sum came from 256,000 donors with an average donation of $49.
“We are grateful for the immense grassroots support we are seeing. We’re continuing to build a campaign that energizes and expands Team Joe and puts us in a strong position to take on Donald Trump,” Biden campaign manager Greg Schultz said in a statement.
The fundraising figure is on-target with a prediction by Biden in mid-June that he’d raised nearly $20 million. Though, according to that timetable, he could have raised considerably more in the month’s closing days.
Biden’s reported fundraising totals don’t include his cash-on-hand, essentially money in the bank for the coming campaign. Buttigieg in his July 1 statement said his campaign had $22.8 million in cash on hand, a low burn rate, particularly for a candidate who entered the race with little name recognition nationally.
Biden is the third major Democratic candidate to announce his fundraising totals, along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who reported raising $18 million, while also transferring $6 million from existing federal accounts.
Biden has spent much of his two-and-a-half months as a presidential candidate at fundraisers, particularly in blue enclaves like New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. But the former Delaware senator’s fundraising events have also at times proven liabiilties. At a recent Manhattan fundraiser, Biden mused about his 1970s-era legislative partnerships with some of the most notorious segregationist senators of their eras.
Biden’s remark caused days of headaches for his campaign and cleanup statements. And it provided an opening in the first Democratic debate for a 2020 rival, California Sen. Kamala Harris, to challenge him over opposition to school busing early in his career, among other issues.
Democratic primary rivals Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have criticized high-dollar donor events like the ones that Biden embraces. Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir suggested to reporters Tuesday that money raised at exclusive events comes with strings attached.
According to the Biden campaign, 97% of donations came from “grassroots donors,” but it did not specify what that term meant.
The Biden campaign raised $6.3 million in the first 24 hours after launching his campaign, more than any other Democratic presidential candidate in the first 24 hours of their campaigns.
