Bernie Sanders raises nearly $35 million in the final months of 2019
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Thursday that he had raised more than $34.5 million in the final three months of 2019, a haul that will allow him to run an extensive campaign in the new year as Democratic voters begin the process of selecting a nominee.
That’s a few million dollars shy of what 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton raised in the same period in that election cycle, but Sanders’ campaign notes that his fourth-quarter contributions came from more than 1.8 million individual donations and the average donation during that period was $18.53, indicators of grass-roots support.
“Bernie Sanders is closing the year with the most donations of any candidate in history at this point in a presidential campaign,” said campaign manager Faiz Shakir. “He is proving each and every day that working-class Americans are ready and willing to fully fund a campaign that stands up for them and takes on the biggest corporations and the wealthy.”
This 2020 presidential campaign is shaping up to be the most expensive in history, in part because billionaires Michael R. Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have each already spent more than $100 million of their own money on advertising since their respective late entries into the race.
Sanders revealed his fundraising haul one day after former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced that he had raised more than $24.7 million in the fourth quarter. It’s an impressive figure for a candidate who was a virtual unknown one year ago.
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang’s campaign has said it expects to bring in more than $12.5 million in the fourth quarter.
No other candidates have released their fundraising numbers, though Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has indicated that contributions have slowed as she has dipped in the polls.
Neither Sanders nor Buttigieg released a key figure — the amount of cash they have on hand entering the new year. A Sanders spokesman said the campaign did not plan to release the number at this time; the Buttigieg campaign didn’t respond to an inquiry about the subject.
Campaign finance disclosures that detail cash on hand, donors, spending and other granular information are not due to be filed with the Federal Election Commission until Jan. 31.
Sanders and Buttigieg released top-line numbers as the candidates gear up for a dizzying month in the final push before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3, and as the race has increasingly revolved around the power of the wealthy, including campaign donors.
Sanders and Warren, who have both renounced big-dollar fundraisers in the 2020 campaign, attacked Buttigieg at the December Democratic debate in Los Angeles for holding a closed-door fundraiser at a Napa Valley wine cave and having billionaire benefactors. (It would later emerge that Warren herself had held a fundraiser at a winery prior to her presidential run.) During the debate, Sanders also went after former Vice President Joe Biden and his wealthy donors.
Buttigieg’s average donation in 2019 was $38, considerably higher than Sanders and Warren. At the end of December, his campaign announced a contest that was widely viewed as a ploy to lower that figure. Days before the fourth quarter closed, supporters were asked to take part in a competition over who could contribute the smallest unique donation to the campaign. Buttigieg’s average donation in the fourth quarter declined to $33.
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