The NPR Politics Podcast - Pence Is Struggling (And More Insights From Fundraising Numbers)

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

And President Biden raised a healthy $72 million dollars. Republican candidates are racing to meet the 40,000 donors threshold set by the Republican National Committee in order to qualify for the first debate.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This episode was produced by Lexie Schapitl. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Janine in San Diego, California, washing mountains of very dirty laundry after my family's epic trip to Yosemite National Park, where we were drenched on the Mist Trail in Lower Yosemite Falls, climbed to Glacier Point in Eagle Peak, and to the very top of Half Dome. This broadcast was recorded at... Wow! 1.06pm on Monday, July 17th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will probably be done with the laundry. However, I will never forget all the memories we made on the trail and those gorgeous views at Yosemite National Park. Enjoy the show. I love this twist on the mountaintop timestamp, which is the laundry after the mountaintop timestamp. I'm sure Yosemite was lovely, but I feel you on that post-trip laundry mountain that you always have to climb when you get back.

It's pretty daunting. I did a lot of laundry myself over the weekend, and I will just say that the podcast is very good to listen to while cleaning. Oh, there you go. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And President Biden is starting his reelection campaign with tens of millions of dollars in the bank, so far considerably outpacing the crowded field of Republican rivals. Tam, how much did President Biden raise and put it in perspective

compared to past incumbents? Yeah, so President Biden, and we should say that this is combined with the Democratic National Committee and their joint fundraising committees, and that is the privilege of incumbency is that the party is your party. He raised $72 million, which is a lot of money. But it turns out it's actually less than the second quarter of the off year fundraising of both former President Obama and former President Trump. Of course, it's not completely apples to apples, because Biden got in late in April, Obama had gotten in early in April. And of course, former President Trump was running for president for reelection, basically from the day of his inauguration in 2017.

Well, he has the advantage, though, of being able to wait around until a general election while a lot of the Republicans who are running are having to spend all this money to wage a primary race. Yeah, exactly. And Biden's campaign has definitely pointed that out, that, you know, he's not running against Trump 2019 or Obama 2011. He's running against the existing field, which is currently beating each other up. And, you know, some of whom are not posting stellar numbers. Domenico, we talk a lot about small donors versus big donors. Both matter a lot in politics. Can you sort of illuminate the distinction and why they matter?

Yeah, when we talk about small dollar donors, we're talking about the ones who give less than $200 in a single giving. So that's important because that indicates a degree of grassroots support. If you're going hunting for this in FEC data, like I was, you're looking at the difference between itemized and un-itemized donations. The un-itemized are the people who are giving less than $200 per donation. Well, the campaign certainly has a lot to say about small dollar donors. And I spoke with Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is Biden campaign co-chair. He's one of the big dollar donors. I interviewed him about this, and he said that there were 400,000, about 400,000 small dollar donors.

97% of those donations are under $200, with the average at $39. Those are stunning numbers. You know, in two days in San Francisco, President Biden raised over $10 million. So he's combining two things there, right? Yeah. So small dollar donors, there are a lot of them, not as many as Obama and Trump had, but it's still a very big number. And then $10 million in two days going to Tony fundraisers in San Francisco. And that is where the bulk of the money did come from is these big dollar fundraisers. In fact, a lot of these candidates are relying quite heavily on their big dollar donors versus the small dollar ones.

Well, a lot of that's because these candidates, you know, had other jobs and they are able to make a phone call and say, hey, guys, I need you to support my campaign. You've supported me in the past. So they go back to those folks and they are able to show a big number right out of the gate. But then they have to sustain that over many months and over multiple quarters. And that's going to mean getting more small dollar donors over a longer period of time. And so far, a lot of those candidates are not doing that, especially Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has 85% of his donors so far are larger dollar donors. And 70% of those larger dollar donors have already maxed out to his campaign. That is that in a primary, they've given the maximum that they're

allowed to give, which is $3,300. And if they've, quote unquote, maxed out for the entire campaign, that would be an additional $3,300 that they're allowed to give to the general election. The candidates are allowed to raise money for the general election already, but they can't use that money in a primary. So there's a big pot of money, a slice of this money here, you know, one out of $6 for DeSantis that he can't even use for the primary. So there's a big pot of money, a slice of this money here, you know, one out of six dollars for DeSantis that he can't even use for the primary. And Tan, these fundraising disclosures matter for another reason. They are used by the parties often as a threshold to let candidates onto the debate stage. Does it look like most of these Republican candidates are going to make it on the stage?

Right. So they have to get 40,000 unique individual donors, and many of them do look to be in a good place. I will say that former Vice President Mike Pence, it's not, like former Governor Asa Hutchinson, former Representative Will Hurd, who just got in the race. So far, what we've seen is that it looks like Trump, Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and the former tech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy right now look like your debate stage. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about former President Trump's fundraising numbers. And we're back. And Domenico, former President Donald Trump is not an incumbent, but he's acting like it. He's also the frontrunner for the nomination. How did his numbers look so far? You know, his numbers are really kind of murky. It's hard to tell. You know, he says that he's raised about $35 million or a

little bit more in this quarter. When you look at just his campaign, it's $17.7 million for this quarter. Where this confusion comes in is because he has multiple committees that can raise money for him. So because he was a former president, he had run using a joint fundraising committee. That joint fundraising committee has raised over $150 million just in the 2022 midterm election cycles. And a lot of that money is left over and can be transferred to the Trump campaign. When I dug into some of the individual donations, $15 million of the $17.7 million from this quarter came from that Trump joint fundraising committee. Why that makes it hard for us to tell you whether or not that indicates any level of grassroots support or not is because we can't tell how much of that money was given by smaller

donors, people who've given less than $200 because we can't see it quite yet because their fundraising deadline for the Joint Fundraising Committee and these other super PACs is the end of this month. So we've got a couple weeks before we can really dig into that. If passed as prologue, which it tends to be here, he does pretty well with small donors, actually. About 52% of the entire 2022 cycle fundraising for that Joint Fundraising Committee came from donors who gave less than $200 per donation, which really is an indicator again, that Trump has the small dollar donors, the breadth of support from a lot of these folks. And it's why a lot of these other candidates continue to struggle

because they're given to Trump. And I will just say, he has a lot of people on an automatic payment plan. Yeah, like people started giving to him years ago in some cases and are just continuing to give on a monthly or weekly basis. But Domenico, for all the talk of these two candidates of Biden and Trump about how they're not very popular, how there's not a lot of enthusiasm for them, how voters want someone else, they're not having any trouble raising money. So it certainly that tells us something about them. Well, it certainly tells us that there's a huge power of incumbency and name ID and that they've done a lot of work. They have big operations. They've, like Tam said, you know, on the Trump campaign, gotten people to give over and over again and sign them up for that. They have established brands. They have established campaigns. And you have these two sort of aircraft carriers that are moving toward

each other while you've got all these other little speedboats trying to take them out. And the Biden campaign has said that they're particularly proud of the fact that about 30% of their small dollar donors are new donors this cycle, which is, you know, one of those interesting little fun facts that we'll see how it continues to play out. And look, the base is who gives money. And both of these men, while they are unpopular more broadly with the country, they're very popular still

with the Republican and Democratic bases, respectively. Tim, there's another dynamic about Biden's fundraising that I think is interesting. And it is a little inside baseball, but it's also different from how one of his predecessors, former President Barack Obama, did it, in that Biden's working pretty closely with the Democratic National Committee to raise money and Obama didn't. So can you explain the difference there and what the strategy is? The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee are fully integrated. They have what

are called joint fundraising agreements with all 50 state parties. This is the earliest this has ever happened for an incumbent president. And what that allows them to do is raise up to a million dollars from each donor. basically into the same pot, which is this joint fundraising committee, and then can be distributed either to the presidential campaign or the Democratic National Committee to do work in a swing state or to a state party in a state with a particularly competitive gubernatorial race or state legislative race. But all of that money is then reflected as part of President Biden's fundraising total. In fact, President Trump in 2019 and President Obama in 2011 also released their numbers jointly with the party. So this is in that way, it's sort of standard. But the amount that the Biden campaign is integrated with and leaning on the DNC is quite unique for the Democratic Party in recent years. Domenico, every election is more expensive than the one before it. Is there any expectations for just how expensive 2024 is going to be?

Yeah, it's going to be a huge number, everyone expects. I mean, the 2020 election was about $14 billion in total when you count congressional races as well. Every year we've seen the number go up billions and billions of dollars. And with the stakes getting higher and higher and with the ease of fundraising getting better and better, it's only expected to go up. All right. I think that's it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.