HOUSTON — Two days before Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders is proving he’s the man to beat in the 2020 Democratic presidential field not only for delegates but also in fundraising.
The Sanders campaign announced Sunday the Vermont senator, who leads the delegate race for the nomination with 56 in his ledger, despite coming a distant second in this weekend’s South Carolina primary, raised a monster $46.5 million in February. That amount can be compared to the $25 million he brought in January, which at the time was more than any Democratic White House hopeful haul during a three-month financial quarter in 2019.
His team didn’t reveal how much cash they still had on hand before they contest 14 states simultaneously on March 3, but financial disclosure documents show he had $16.8 million in his coffers as of Jan. 31.
“We’re especially proud that of the more than 2 million donations we received this month, over 1.4 million were from voters in states that vote on Super Tuesday,” Sanders’s campaign manager Faiz Shakir wrote in a statement, adding 350,000 people gave to his boss for the first time in February.
While Sanders has ads running in 12 of the 14 Super Tuesday states, the injection of cash will assist him in financing airtime in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, and Washington, which weigh in on the primary on March 10, and Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio, which do the same on March 17.
The average donation in February was $21, and, despite the socialist’s railings against Amazon, employees from the company were among his top contributors, Shakir said.
Since launching his second presidential bid roughly a year ago, Sanders has raised more than $167 million from about 8.7 million individual donors, with an average contribution of $19. Almost all of those people haven’t given him the maximum individual federal donation, capped at $2,800, meaning they can contribute again in the future.
In comparison, Sanders’s ideological ally Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has eight delegates so far behind Joe Biden’s 48 and Pete Buttigieg’s 26, disclosed she raised $29 million in February, having brought in $10.4 million in January, with $2.3 million cash on hand at the end of last month.
Biden, fresh off his first-ever primary win amid his third White House campaign, tweeted he raised $5 million in the past 24 hours as South Carolina went to the polls. He additionally brought in $1.2 million earlier this week after the state’s debate. He raised $8.9 million in January, with $7.1 million cash on hand at the end of that month, but has yet to release his February total numbers.
Buttigieg, once a fundraising powerhouse, was further back in the pack, raising only $6.2 million in January, ending the month with $6.6 million cash on hand. Hoping to assuage concerns, his team announced he brought in $11 million by mid-February after strong performances in the cycle’s first two contests, winning Iowa and coming second in New Hampshire to Sanders.
The figures, however, pale in comparison to their chief Super Tuesday rival: billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who’s self-funding his presidential ambitions. Bloomberg, who forewent the first four early-nominating contests, spent $220.4 million on his operation in January alone, bringing his total outlay up to $409 million since announcing his run in late November.
