Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris arrives for a campaign event at the Dort Financial Center in Flint, Michigan, October 4, 2024.
Geoff Robins | Afp | Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign operation crossed the $1 billion fundraising threshold in September, two months after she took over as the Democratic Party’s 2024 standard bearer, according to two people familiar with the numbers.
That figure includes money raised by the campaign committee itself and by a campaign-affiliated joint fundraising committee that also collects cash for the Democratic National Committee and state parties.
The staggering pace suggests Harris has been able to sustain enthusiasm among donors, large and small, as the campaign enters the stretch run before the Nov. 5 election. But it comes amid a historic onslaught of outside spending from super PACs and other groups that has the Harris campaign concerned — particularly on direct mail, where the Harris campaign has seen Republicans open a steep advantage in recent months, and on the ground, where groups like Elon Musk’s super PAC and others are working to turn out voters for former President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, public polling of the race shows a finely balanced contest, with little separating Harris and Trump in the key swing states that will ultimately decide the 2024 election — and a sliver of swing voters still waiting to make a decision based on something they see in the last four weeks.
Presidential campaigns tend to take in more money as an election nears, but a clip of roughly half a billion dollars a month is unheard of. Biden’s campaign raised a little more than $1 billion for the entire 2020 election cycle, which included a competitive primary, and affiliated outside groups chipped in another $580 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Harris has opened up a huge cash advantage over her Republican rival, Trump, who had raised just $309 million for his campaign through the end of August.
Republican super PACs are helping fill in the gap, spending more than $80 million on TV ads across the country in September, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking service. The biggest GOP groups have more than $100 million in ads reserved for the final weeks.
And yet more money is pouring into online, mail and door-to-door campaigning.