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WASHINGTON, April 18 (AP) — Long before votes were counted and reliable polls were conducted, one of the earliest ways to gauge a presidential candidate’s popularity was in dollars.
Getting donors to give their money is a key measure of viability, especially in the early stages of a White House campaign.
Those who raise significant amounts of cash will have the resources to pay for advertising, travel and events that go deep into the primaries. Those who struggle or run out of cash usually quit.
Faced with such high stakes, candidates are often motivated to essentially milk their numbers to appear more competitive than they really are.
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That’s especially true in the opening stages of the 2024 Republican presidential primary, with contenders aiming to prove they can raise enough money to pose a threat to Donald Trump, a prolific fundraiser known for And eager to preserve his former president’s status as the dominant figure in the Republican Party.
At such an early stage, “it’s just a quantifiable area where people can compare themselves to other people in the field,” said Republican political strategist Liam Donovan. It’s a popularity contest in another way.”
Case in point is former South Carolina Gov. and ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who became Trump’s first major Republican challenger in February.
She avoided revealing how much her campaign had raised in its early days, bypassing what is usually a candidate’s early bragging rights.
Notably, her campaign declined to detail her receipts, even as her fundraising appeal capitalized on CNN anchor Don Lemon’s sexist and ageist remarks about Hayley in an attempt to turn outrage into sympathy money.
But last week, as the deadline for submitting its first quarterly fundraising report loomed, Haley’s campaign issued a press release announcing it had raised $11 million — a huge boost in a Trump-led campaign. An impressive number for any candidate.
“In just six weeks, Nikki Haley’s massive fundraising and aggressive retail efforts in early voting states have made her a force to be reckoned with,” Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankeny said in a statement. said in a statement.
But some of those claims collapsed once her fundraising reports were made public Saturday night, as Haley began her career as an accountant and her campaign used a series of accounting stunts to artificially inflate her fundraising earnings . In fact, she only raised $8.3 million, far less than what her campaign claimed.
Haley’s campaign runs three separate political committees, all of which are raising money. To come up with the $11 million figure, they double-counted the funds that were transferred from one operational node to another — once those funds were transferred from one branch of her campaign operation to another, they were effectively displacing the campaign Funds already raised are treated as new funds next.
The practice is not illegal, and Haley’s campaign has said it supports it.
Fundraising disclosures suggest she’s not the only one using the gimmick. Marco Rubio employed a similar strategy during his 2016 presidential campaign, as did President Joe Biden during his 2020 campaign.
Trump has done the same, and just last year he raised $9.5 million in the final quarter of 2022, though he raised a few million less.
Veteran Republican strategist Kevin McLaughlin said: “I’m a little bit surprised that the whole thing gets people’s attention. Everyone does.”
While he’s not officially running, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina launched his presidential scouting committee last week with a whopping $22 million in the bank. If Scott stays the course and officially joins the race, he will enter the race with the largest campaign account balance of any contender in history.
Of course, this figure does not represent a sudden surge in financial support for Scott. The two-term senator hasn’t faced a contested race in years. At the same time, he has benefited greatly from his position in the Senate, which has given him access to donors across the country and allowed him to build a large war chest.
It’s similar to the approach Sen. Elizabeth Warren used in the 2020 Democratic primary. The Massachusetts progressive’s relentless fundraising efforts during his 2018 Senate re-election campaign have attracted major donors.
She reversed course a few months later, calling on all of her rivals to forego glitzy fundraising events, which she deemed inappropriate.
Many of her competitors are struggling to raise funds. However, Warren used the remaining $10.4 million in cash from her Senate campaign to lay the groundwork for her White House bid.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to become a candidate in the Republican presidential primary, left an eye-popping $85.8 million in his 2022 gubernatorial re-election bid. But under federal law, he is prohibited from transferring that money from his state campaign to the presidential campaign committee.
However, under a gray area of campaign finance law, that money could be diverted to super PACs backing his candidacy, which can spend unlimited amounts of money as long as they don’t coordinate with DeSantis’ presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, the governor’s allies are raising money for the expected campaign.
Never Back Down, a political committee recently formed to urge him to run, said it had bankrolled $30 million.
One arm of the group is running ads defending DeSantis and attacking Trump, while another arm of the operation is raising money that could go directly to DeSantis should he run.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign reported raising more than $18.8 million from his main campaign account and a joint fundraising account in the first three months of the year. In addition to the money he raised in the first quarter, his campaign said it had raised $15.4 million since April after he was indicted in New York over hush money payments to a porn actress involved in an affair.
Trump has denied the allegations and has derided the criminal charges as politically motivated.
Donovan said the former president’s fundraising was fueled by small donors and his command of the news cycle, making it difficult for any other candidate to fundraise on the same scale.
Candidates can use strong fundraising numbers to attract more donations by appealing to wealthy Republican donors who are looking for an alternative to Trump, he said.
“There’s a strong signal emerging at this stage in the process. Major donors and major donors are looking around and evaluating what other people are doing,” Donovan said.
“People want to support the winners,” he said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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