(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
Washington Post
Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign has raised $540 million since it launched last month, including a surge bolstered by the Democratic National convention in Chicago and a total that amounts to "a record for any campaign in history,” according to a memo released on Sunday by the campaign.
The campaign raised $82 million during the convention last week, with the best hour coming after Harris delivered her acceptance speech Thursday night, according to the memo from Harris campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon. A third of the week's donations were from first-time contributors, indicating her ability to tap into donors that President Joe Biden did not have when he was the presumptive Democratic nominee, the memo said. Two-thirds of the first-time donors were women, the campaign said.
"The enthusiasm and energy at the United Center this week was palpable,” O'Malley Dillon wrote. "But that enthusiasm extended well beyond Chicago, spreading far and wide throughout the battleground states that will decide this election.”
The campaign said the fundraising - which cannot be independently confirmed until its next finance reports are filed - reflects totals raised across Harris for President, the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees.
Volunteers also signed up for nearly 200,000 shifts during convention week, which marked the biggest week of organizing since the start of the campaign, the memo said.
Following the convention, the campaign has released a new ad airing in all seven battleground states, and announced on Saturday that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are campaigning on a bus tour in Georgia on Wednesday and Thursday.
The latest number reflects a massive wave of fundraising by Democrats since Biden decided on July 21 to abandon his presidential reelection bid and throw his support behind Harris.
Her campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised three times as much as Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee in July. The cash advantage 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.
O'Malley Dillon highlighted the outreach to Republicans disaffected by Trump, saying the convention "supercharged our campaign's outreach to conservative and independent voters,” including six Republican speakers featured onstage in Chicago.
As of the end of July - the latest date for which figures reported to the Federal Election Commission are available - Harris and her allied committees reported having $377 million cash on hand going into August, compared with $327 million for the GOP.
That gap appears likely to widen over the month of August. None of this accounts for the well-funded super PACs in support of each candidate, which have already begun flooding the airwaves with ads.
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