Campaign fundraising expert: 'fairly catastrophic' for Biden if donations dry up
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President Biden is facing mounting pressure from Democratic politicians to withdraw as the party's presumptive nominee for this fall's presidential election — with key donors weighing in to call for a change at the top of the ticket.
Biden's debate performance last month raised concerns about his health and mental acuity, and while he has said repeatedly that he's "all in" on continuing his campaign, those concerns have spurred a growing number of elected Democrats to urge the president to step aside.
Several high-profile donors who back Democratic Party candidates have followed suit, with Ari Emanuel calling for him to drop out of the race and Abigail Disney pledging to stop donating until Biden withdraws his candidacy. Two Democratic Party consultants who work with top donors told Fox News that "major donors are pausing" until "things are settled."
Campaign finance expert Rob Pyers told FOX Business that a downturn in donations at this stage of the election season could pose serious problems for the Biden campaign given that Election Day is less than four months away.
President Biden is under pressure from within the Democratic Party to withdraw as the presumptive nominee for this fall's election. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"Any serious fundraising slowdown at this point on the calendar would be fairly catastrophic for the Biden campaign," Pyers told FOX Business. "The pace of their spending would be expected to start ramping up right about now."
Pyers noted that in 2020, from July 1 to mid-November, the Biden campaign committee spent nearly $900 million and brought in over $200 million in receipts from August onward. About half a billion dollars of that spending was on media buys and production, while nearly $250 million went to digital ads.
While the 2024 Biden campaign had $91.5 million in cash on hand at the end of May, Pyers said "it had been burning a lot of cash on ads (which in retrospect may have been largely ineffective) rather than stockpiling its war chest." To be in a position to spend like it did in the election four years ago, the Biden campaign can't afford a drop-off in donations.
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President Biden's debate performance against former President Trump raised alarm among Democratic politicians and donors. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)
The news that major Democratic donors have slowed the pace of their campaign contributions was first reported Thursday by NBC News, which was followed by other outlets including CNN and Politico. The Biden campaign pushed back on those reports, with campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt telling Fox News Digital that the stories were "not accurate."
"On grassroots fundraising, the first seven days of July were the best start to the month on the campaign — and many of those were first-time donors. On the high-dollar side, we've had folks max out since the debate, as well," Hitt said in a statement.
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The Biden campaign disputed that there has been a decline in campaign contributions. (Ramsay de Give/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Pyers noted that given the reporting timelines for committees that accept larger donations are quarterly, "[w]e probably won't see the full extent of any collapse with large donors until the Q3 reports that won't post until mid-October. In the short-term, we'll mainly have the monthly reports from the Biden campaign committee and DNC on August 20th and September 20th to keep tabs on the overall trajectory."
Democratic donors looking to hedge their bets with respect to whether Biden will remain on the ticket could look to Super PACs, though Pyers said there are trade-offs involved with opting against donating to the president's campaign committee.
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"With the uncertainty at the top of the ticket, it's possible for the megadonors to keep writing checks to the Democratic Super PACs like Future Forward and American Bridge," Pyers said.
"But without the favorable ad rates given to candidate committees, half a billion in broadcast independent expenditures won't get anywhere near the gross rating points that half a billion in Biden campaign broadcast expenditures would, so it's a somewhat ineffective substitute."
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.