• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Campaign Finance>
  3. campaign finance>

Asserting small-donor surge, Trump expands presidential money pool

David Hawkings
April 15, 2019

There's a newly bipartisan dimension to the vast pool of presidential campaign cash, the ever-expanding ocean of money that's cited more often than anything as a root cause of our democracy's travails.

What's different this year, however, is how small-dollar gifts are dominating the deposits in so many of the top-tier candidates' bank accounts – and vying for attention with the donations from millionaires and corporate interests engendering sustained worries about the pay-to-play aspects of American government.

President Trump's reelection campaign is the latest to boast of a huge trove of small donations. Today it reported a haul of $30 million in the first quarter of this year, 99 percent of it in gifts of $200 or less. The average gift has been $34 and money came between January and March from more than 100,000 people who'd never given to Trump before.


Most of the money so far has been raised by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a digital fundraising operation focused on small-money donors, often recurring donations that's known in Trump's political world as "T-Magic." The committee has singlehandedly reversed what has been a Democratic advantage in the world of online fundraising ever since it was invented in the early years of this century.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

But that sort of giving cannot possibly bring the campaign to its $1 billion fundraising target for 2020, and so this summer a second entity, Trump Victory, will launch a traditional "bundling" program, in which generous donors are recruited to find similarly magnanimous givers among their friends and business associates.

Trump – who gave or loaned $66 million to his 2016 campaign, but has yet to spend any of his own money on 2020 – "is in a vastly stronger position at this point than any previous incumbent president running for reelection," campaign manager Brad Parscale boasted.

In part, that's because he's got the Republican donor base essentially to himself, while more than a dozen Democratic presidential aspirants were raising money in the first quarter. Trump, for example, raised as much as the top two of his potential general election rivals, combined.

Altogether, Democrats have so far reported to the Federal Election Commission a combined $66 million in first-quarter fundraising from more than 1 million different people. Several of the candidates have not filed their reports, which are due at the end of the day: Here are the totals reported so far:

  • Bernie Sanders: $18.2 million
  • Kamala Harris: $12 million
  • Beto O'Rourke: $9.4 million
  • Pete Buttigieg: $7 million
  • Elizabeth Warren: $6 million
  • Amy Klobuchar: $5.2 million
  • Cory Booker: $5 million
  • Kirsten Gillibrand: $3 million
  • John Delaney: $12.1 million (but only $400,000 from donors other than the candidate)
  • Andrew Yang: $1.7 million
Related Articles Around the Web
  • President Trump Expands Fundraising Lead in Presidential Race ... ›
  • Trump Raises $30M for 2020—More Than Any Democratic ... ›
  • Trump's fundraising numbers show his campaign lapping ... ›
campaign finance

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Jeremy Garson

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Jay Paterno

Re-imagining Title IX: An opportunity to flex our civic muscles

Lisa Kay Solomon

'Independent state legislature theory' is unconstitutional

Daniel O. Jamison

How afraid are we?

Debilyn Molineaux

Politicians certifying election results is risky and unnecessary

Kevin Johnson
latest News

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Amanda Becker, The 19th
24 June

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Our Staff
24 June

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

David Meyers
23 June

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Our Staff
23 June

Podcast: Past, present, future

Our Staff
23 June

Video: America's vulnerable elections

Our Staff
22 June
Videos

Video: Memorial Day 2022

Our Staff

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Bridge Alliance intern Sachi Bajaj speaks at the June 12 Civvy Awards.

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Leadership
abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Campaign Finance
Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Media
Abortion rights and anti-abortion protestors at the Supreme Court

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Big Picture
Virginia primary voter

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Voting