Harris raises $50m after Biden’s exit from presidential race
Democrats poured in nearly $50m (£38.7m) in donations for Vice-President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.
The progressive donation platform, ActBlue, said the amount from small donors marks “the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle”.
“Grassroots supporters are energised and excited to support her as the Democratic nominee,” said ActBlue on X.
Donors who had pulled back their funding over concerns about Mr Biden’s age say they now intend to resume their support for the party.
The party raised over $27.5m in the first five hours of Ms Harris’ presidential campaign. That number nearly doubled by the end of the day.
The surge in donations in the last 24 hours is the single biggest for online contributions to Democrats since 2020, according to the New York Times, when ActBlue raised $73.5m after the death of Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
They are also the third in ActBlue’s history, which counts donations made to most Democrats in the House and Senate, as well as non-profits.
The new funds mark a significant turn for the Democratic Party, which has seen support erode from major donors after Mr Biden’s poor performance in June’s presidential debate against Donald Trump.
Grassroots funding from small donors had also diminished, according to Biden campaign insiders cited in US media.
But soon after Mr Biden’s announcement to drop out of the race and his endorsement of Ms Harris’ bid for the White House, Democrats went online to contribute at a startling pace.
Win With Black Women, a group of Black women leaders, held a Zoom call with more than 44,000 participants on Sunday night to throw their support behind the vice-president.
The group says it raised over $1.5m in three hours for her presidential campaign.
Joe Cotchett, a San Francisco-based political fundraiser for the Democrats, told NBC News that donors “are now ready to dig into their pockets”.
Among them is Gideon Stein, president of the Moriah Fund and a donor for the party, who told the US news outlet that he will resume his funding after having paused it because of concerns over Mr Biden’s electability.
Several high-profile political donors have also indicated their support for Ms Harris as the Democratic party nominee.
Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, called the vice president “the right person at the right time”.
