Kamala Harris reports massively outraising Trump in July

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Kamala Harris’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised three times as much as Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee in July, and ended the month with a cash advantage that positions the newly minted Democratic presidential nominee to air more ads and maintain a larger payroll than her Republican opponent in the final months of the race for the White House.

Those results, which are based on federal filings released Tuesday and Wednesday, do not capture the full fundraising picture because several committees that support the candidates will not report their quarterly tallies until October.

But the Harris campaign and her allied committees said they raised more than $300 million last month in total and had $377 million on hand heading into August. Much of that money came in during the days after July 21, when President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris to succeed him at the top of the ticket, her aides have said.

The Trump campaign and his allied committees said they raised nearly $139 million in July and had $327 million in cash on hand heading into August. That four-week fundraising total was less than the $200 million that the Harris campaign said it raised during the first week after Biden ended his reelection bid. Because the parties’ allied committees won’t report until October, The Washington Post was unable to independently verify either effort’s claimed fundraising totals.

Harris’s main committee and the DNC entered August with a $286 million war chest that exceeds the $250 million bankroll Trump’s committee and the RNC reported, according to Tuesday’s filings.

Harris’s huge haul reestablishes a fundraising lead that Democrats had held before Trump’s May 30 conviction on 34 felony charges in New York led to a surge in online donations to the Republican’s campaign. By the end of May, Trump had essentially erased the cash advantage that Biden and the DNC had held over Trump and the RNC for much of this year. But Democrats’ swift embrace of Harris, who reversed Biden’s downward trajectory in key swing-state polls, upended that equation, re-energizing the party’s donors.

During the early months of this year, Biden and Harris’s cash advantage allowed them to build an extensive campaign operation with more than 280 offices and more than 1,600 aides, and to make plans to scale up to 2,000 staff members by Election Day. The Trump campaign, which has declined to share the size of its staff, has made the unusual and electorally risky decision to outsource much of its voter turnout operation to third-party groups such as America First Works, America PAC and Turning Point Action.

Harris campaign officials have said that two-thirds of the people who have given to her campaign since she became a presidential candidate are new donors. The campaign has said it has booked $370 million in ads for the period after Labor Day – with $200 million of that spending devoted to digital advertising.

But the super PACs aligned with Trump remain well funded. Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC that has aired tens of millions of dollars in ads on behalf of Trump, raised $54 million in July, driven by a $50 million gift from reclusive billionaire Timothy Mellon. The largest donor to MAGA Inc. has been Mellon, who has given $126.5 million since late 2022, including a staggering $100 million over the past three months.

Both the Future Forward super PAC, which has aired ads supporting Biden and Harris, and MAGA Inc. reported about $124 in cash on hand at the end of July. Future Forward raised less than MAGA Inc. It brought in $29.7 million during the period, driven by a $20 million donation from its affiliated nonprofit, Future Forward USA Action, which is not required to disclose donors.

Future Forward plans to spend at least $250 million on television and digital advertising in a major push between Labor Day and Election Day in November, Chauncey McLean, the group’s president, said at a forum hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics this week.