Having spent months assuaging Democratic fears about the election by pointing to their fundraising lead over Donald Trump, the Biden team reported this week that it had brought in less money in April than Trump’s campaign claimed to have raised alongside the RNC.
That halted, at least for the moment, the Biden team’s months of crowing and promises to bury Trump in a pile of cash — and sparked some concern that one clear advantage the president enjoyed may be neutralized.
Privately, aides have two main explanations. The first is that there was a dearth of big donor events last month, which they are already planning to change in the weeks ahead. Some also point to a larger structural dynamic that could prove harder to fix: The grassroots fundraising machine that boosted them in 2020 isn’t yet humming.
“There is a question as to when the grassroots money really kicks in in a meaningful way,” said one campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We saw that happening in March a bit, but it’s not organic yet in a way that it needs to be.”
The campaign notes that it still has substantially more cash on hand and has spent four years building a strong and durable online network, adding that “a majority of April’s raise came from grassroots donors,” and that “one million more supporters” were added to its email list. But grassroots fundraising for the campaign has, so far, been less of a gusher and more of a faucet being occasionally turned on.
Online donations spiked around events like the Radio City Music Hall gathering headlined by Joe Biden and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Biden’s State of the Union address. But otherwise, it has been relatively flat. Biden’s campaign and his principal joint fundraising committee, Biden Victory Fund, saw around 100,000 first-time givers on the online portal ActBlue in April, according to an analysis of ActBlue’s FEC filings. That was down from nearly 250,000 donors who gave to Biden’s campaign or his joint fundraising committee for the first time in March.
Operatives in the digital space say they understand why.
