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The most important stories about money and politics in the race for the White House
Kamala Harris has raised more than $500 million since entering the race for the White House, boosted by donor enthusiasm during this week’s Democratic National Convention.
The U.S. vice president has raised $540 million since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the party’s ticket for the November election, including $82 million during DNC week, according to a memorandum from campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon. The total includes money going to the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees.
O’Malley Dillon called the haul “a record for any campaign in history.”
The fundraising coalition surpassed the $500 million mark on Thursday, shortly before Harris took the stage at the DNC podium in Chicago to deliver the most important speech of her life, and “immediately afterward … we experienced our finest hour of fundraising since the day we were founded,” O’Malley Dillon wrote.
She also said there had been “unprecedented grassroots giving” during the party’s convention week, with a third of donations coming from first-time donors. Of these new donors, 20 percent were young voters and two-thirds were women.
During the four-day Democratic convention, the party sought to reposition itself as a patriotic champion of the nation, with the vice president portraying Donald Trump’s defeat on Election Day as an act of love of country.
“Now it’s our turn to do what generations before us have done,” Harris told a packed crowd waving flags and cheering her as a candidate for change. “Guided by optimism and faith, we fight for this country we love.”
The new donations come after Harris raised four times as much as Trump in July: $204 million compared to the former president’s $48 million, according to a Financial Times analysis of federal records. They could fill a fundraising gap the Republican left behind compared to Biden.
Harris’ campaign ended July with $220 million in cash, while Trump’s campaign had $151 million.
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But the former president is still cashing checks from major donors, including a $50 million donation last month from billionaire Timothy Mellon, scion of a U.S. banking dynasty. During a campaign appearance in a swing state on Friday, Trump attacked Harris as a “flip-flopper” in politics and welcomed the support of ex-Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has put his own hopeless presidential bid on hold.
The energy for Harris is still palpable, and Trump campaign pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis acknowledged in a memo Saturday that “we will likely see another small (if temporary) boost for Harris in the public polls after the DNC.”
According to a FiveThirtyEight poll average, Harris is 3.6 points ahead of Trump nationwide.
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