Campaign Finance: Advantage Trump

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  

Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.

Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is working the phones with top donors while cloistered in his Delaware home. His digital team is searching for the right tone to ask small contributors for cash during the sharpest economic downturn in their lifetimes. And his finance operation is plotting how to keep the checks coming when catered parties for big contributors are on hold — indefinitely.

Top Biden fund-raisers and donors, as well as campaign, super PAC and Democratic Party officials, described urgent efforts to reimagine the ways they raise money during a pandemic and global economic slowdown. And in nearly two dozen interviews, they expressed deepening concern that the downturn could choke off the flow of small online donations as millions of people lose their jobs.

The coronavirus shut down much of the American economy just as the former vice president took control of the Democratic presidential race, upending his plans to consolidate support among party donors who had previously supported other candidates and diminishing his ability to replenish his cash reserves to compete with President Trump’s well-funded re-election campaign.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden face the same headwinds. But the president began March with an enormous financial advantage over the Democrats: a combined roughly $225 million in cash on hand between his re-election campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared committees. Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee had only $20 million, after accounting for debts.

Jonathan Martin and Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

Two of the most prominent outside Democratic groups are forming a partnership to pool resources and research to help elect former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. this fall, an attempt at consolidating fund-raising in an increasingly competitive marketplace for third-party organizations.

Unite the Country, the super PAC formed late last year to support Mr. Biden, and the progressive group American Bridge are teaming up to coordinate their efforts in hopes of raising about $175 million together to defeat President Trump in November, leaders from the two groups said Monday.