Donald Trump is desperately chasing cash in his opponent’s deep-blue home state of California as Kamala Harris crushes him in the money race and Republicans worry the dearth could cost them power in Congress.
Trump attended a fundraiser Thursday in the Beverly Hills area of Los Angeles, where premium seats and a photo-op went for $50,000. He’s heading up the coast Friday to a Bay Area fundraiser hosted by a billionaire relative of the state’s Democratic first lady.
But he’ll need many more billionaires and many more fundraisers if he stands any chance of catching up to Harris, who has blown Trump out of the water on fundraising since entering the presidential race in July.
The former president’s poor debate performance could close the cash spigot even further. His own donors were disappointed with his presentation Tuesday night, when he perpetuated far-fetched right-wing conspiracies, The New York Times reported. And polls show most voters think Harris won.
While Trump scraped for dollars in California as his running mate, JD Vance, cozied up to Wall Street donors, Harris raised $47 million in the 24 hours immediately following the debate. It was her best fundraising day since entering the race, capping weeks of fundraising successes.
The campaign money discrepancy between the GOP and Democratic candidates is startling. The Harris campaign says it raised $361 million in August, nearly triple the $130 million the Trump campaign said it raised that month. The Harris campaign and affiliated committees have a war chest of $404 million compared to the Trump team’s $295 million, the campaigns report.
The money race has changed drastically since a few months ago, when President Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. Though the president had a fundraising advantage early in the year, Trump pulled ahead in May.
Now, he’s on the back foot once again.
Harris has been so flush, she’s been able to share the wealth. Besides directly transferring millions of dollars to committees responsible for electing down-ballot Democrats, her arrival at the top of the ticket helped juice congressional and state-level fundraising. Across the board, party operatives saw record grassroots fundraising as she entered the race.
Down-ballot Republicans, on the other hand, are panicking. The money gap is worrying both House and Senate Republicans, Politico reported. And while the Senate map favors the GOP, the closely-divided House is another story.
“What’s frustrating me is I firmly believe that House Republicans are going to lose the majority and we’re going to lose it because of ourselves,” moderate Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) said this month. “We’re getting out-raised. We’re getting outspent.”
