Top donors to President Obama’s two national campaigns are galvanizing around a potential run by Joe Biden, and those bundlers and givers have little crossover with donors supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, according to top fundraisers for the Draft Biden committee and other veteran strategists backing Biden.
Jon Cooper, an Obama bundler who is now the finance chairman of the Draft Biden Committee 2016 super PAC, says he’s been inundated with phone calls and interest in the last few weeks and has assembled a national finance team of bundlers and donors from coast to coast.
“Based on the surge in support that we’ve seen, we fully expect to raise between $2.5 million and $3 million over the next few weeks,” Cooper, a Long Island technology manufacturer, told the Washington Examiner. “That’s going to provide the resources necessary to build the infrastructure that Vice President Biden will need to hit the ground running and finance a race.”
More have committed to write checks if and when Biden decides to jump in.
Many of the donors are former Obama bundlers, Cooper said, although he acknowledged hearing from some that had previously committed to Clinton but are now changing their minds.
But, he argued, a Biden presidential campaign wouldn’t have to rely on coaxing over more Clinton donors, noting that out of 820 top Obama donors, only 51 have committed to Clinton.
“He’s going to have no problem raising enough money to run a very competitive campaign, a vibrant campaign,” Cooper said. “When you factor in Joe’s strength, authenticity and honesty — that he is humble, likable and straight-shooting, along with his vast experience in public service, more than 43 years, I think that’s going to really resonate with voters.”
“I don’t think he’s going to have to match her dollar-to-dollar in the campaign even though he’ll come close because he has all these natural strengths,” Cooper added.
Paula Levine, a Democratic fundraiser and Biden family friend who served as his New York finance director in 2008, also has fielded plenty of calls and pro-Biden entreaties.
“People are calling me and people are emailing me, and there’s a lot of positive reinforcement,” she said in an interview. “I had a big donor email me with the subject line: ‘Will you tell Joe Biden to run?'”
Some of the longtime Democratic donors contacting Levine are particularly worried that losing the presidential contest will also hurt Senate Democrats’ chances of retaking control of the Senate.
“I do a lot of Senate fundraising and some of those donors are worried that if we don’t win the presidential, Democrats won’t take back the Senate either,” she said. “And that’s worrisome because then Republicans will control three branches of government.”
Other Democratic strategists supporting Biden say most of the Obama donors are relatively new to the political process and are not the traditional establishment Democrats who have a tendency to back Clinton.
“There is a significant core of Obama donors that don’t have a relationship with the Clinton donors,” said one veteran Democratic campaign operative.
Still, other Clinton donors are growing increasingly dissatisfied with her candidacy — and not just over the private email server scandal.
Some Clinton donors are “increasingly disaffected with her fundraising apparatus because they find themselves always in the back of the room,” the operative said. “It’s not a very flat system. I heard grumbling that the Clinton campaign is not doing a good job making us feel like we’re part of the team.”
“There’s a layered [donor] system and too many feel like there’s so many more tiers ahead of them that they can’t get past the velvet rope lines.”
More importantly, the strategist argued, Biden could also turn on the small donor money spigot quite easily.
The fundraising landscape has shifted in a seismic way since Biden ran his 2008 campaign only managed to muster roughly $11 million in 2007 and $13 million total before dropping out of the race.
Obama’s social media-based fundraising and marketing campaign made it easier to raise instant money on the Internet, and now Biden could benefit from the change, as well as his close association with Obama, supporters argue.
“Biden can drop a website up in the air and be able to raise money,” the operative said. “It won’t be as much as Hillary, but it will be significant enough to make him competitive.”
Cooper and other Biden organizers say they’ve seen an upswing in private interest in a Biden run, with polls trending in the vice president’s favor.
A Quinnipiac University national poll, released Thursday, found that Biden performs better than Clinton against all the leading GOP candidates in a general election matchup, and his favorability is higher than any candidate — Democrat or Republican.
Democratic voters are still choosing Clinton as the frontrunner with 45 percent backing her bid, compared to 22 percent for Sanders and 18 percent for Biden.
Biden backers believe those numbers will tick upward if he enters the race, but other Democrats warn that beating Clinton in the primaries, regardless of the email scandal, would still be a tough uphill slog.
“There’s a big difference between how polls come out when you’re a real candidate and you’re not,” a longtime Democratic pollster told the Examiner. “It’s going to be difficult to beat her in a primary at this point.”
Biden, the pollster said, is also likely weighing whether he wants to go out on a high note as a successful vice presidential candidate or take a chance with “putting it all on black and seeing what happens.”
“It depends on what kind of gambler you are,” he said. “He’s emotionally battered, as he has said, and understandably so. But it takes a lot to go out there and run for president and he’s got to have it in him to do it.”
In a conference call with Democratic National Committee members Wednesday, Biden candidly admitted that he’s weighing the personal consequences for himself and his family, who are mourning the death of his son, Beau Biden, just a few months ago.
The vice president said he is still determining whether he has the “emotional fuel” to mount a race, adding that his “whole heart” and his “whole soul” right now are “pretty banged up.”
President Obama, as well as his strongest backers, are giving him plenty of space to make what is understandably the toughest decision of his life.
But many Democrats warn that he has to announce by Oct. 1 if he wants to mount a competitive challenge.
Whether the money spigot starts to gush or not will depend on what Biden’s poll numbers do, Democrats say.
“I don’t think a lot of wealthy people are going to be ready to step up if he’s running 40 points behind,” the pollster said. “Maybe Obama donors are different — but they aren’t that different.”
Others believe the looming deadlines to qualify for the ballots in early primary states are more of a pressing problem for Biden than fundraising.
The vice president and his top advisers are keenly aware that the first Democratic primary takes place Oct. 13, which could be a make or break moment for a fledgling campaign.
Biden has extended the window he has to make decision on whether he will run from the late summer to any time between Sept. 1 and Oct. 1.
He’ll need at least two months to get the petition signatures and delegates lined up by the beginning of December to qualify in early primary states.
There again, Cooper says the Draft Biden Committee is seeing exponential growth. When Cooper first joined the effort in early July, the committee only had 20,000 signatures for Biden. That number has grown to 250,000 signatures over the last few weeks as the possibility that the vice president will jump in has become more real, he said.
“My gut tells me [Biden] knows that we’re laying the foundation and knows we will be able to wage a strong campaign,” Cooper said. “The real question is whether, considering his personal loss, this is the right thing for him and Jill, and he will make that decision when the time is right for him.”
