Former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, is expected to launch his 2020 presidential campaign in a short video on Thursday — with no money from the outset.
By: Harry Cherry
“I don’t think the challenge is underestimated by the Biden team,” Rufus Gifford, President Obama’s 2012 financial director, told The New York Times.
Biden’s top political aides have talked to prominent Democratic donors in recent weeks, and have expressed concern that Mr. Biden may not be able to record fundraising numbers like former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Tex., and Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent from Vermont, did in the first 24-hours of his presidential campaign. Mr. O’Rourke raised over $6 million dollars in the first 24 hours within his campaign’s launch.
Some political experts fear that the more money from large donors that Mr. Biden collects — the more it will hurt his image of being a fighter for middle-class Americans.
One Democratic finance bundler, Wade Randlett, who lives in San Francisco, told The Times that he thinks the “overwhelming share” of Obama fundraisers will come to support Mr. Biden.
“He was an enormously valuable and loyal vice president of the man who we all shed blood, sweat, and tears to make president of the United States,” Mr. Randlett told The Times.
Other Obama fundraisers have thus far come to the aid of Pete Buttigieg, the Mayor of South Bend Indiana and California Senator Kamala Harris.
“This is going to be tough. This is going to be a heavy lift,” Mr. Gifford told The Times, adding: “The Obama people are not a given, and they’re going to have to work for them just like everyone has to work for them.”
Mr. Sanders as well as Elizabeth Warren, a Senator from Massachusetts who is running to obtain the Democratic nomination, have promised supporters not to use bundlers or accept large contributions from corporate donors.
Katie Petrelius, the Director of Development for the Biden Foundation, has been managing the early financial efforts for Mr. Biden’s impending presidential campaign, according to The Times.
“An awful lot of people have offered to help, and the people who are usually the biggest donors in the Democratic Party and, I might add, some major Republican folks,” Mr. Biden said in February at the University of Delaware.
One Democratic fundraising expert, Denise Bauer, however, told The Times in an email that she plans to raise money for Mr. Biden, saying that she is “quite optimistic” about his prospects.
“From what I understand, they are putting together a first-rate, modern organization,” she told The Times. “This wouldn’t be a rerun of 2008 or 2012, or even 2016.”
