In a nationally televised interview on Monday, President Biden pushed back against wealthy Democrats who called for him to end his reelection campaign, saying, “I don't care what the billionaires think.”
He made it clear that small donors have worked hard for him.
But hours later, Biden joined a private conference call with major donors and fundraisers to reassure them: “It matters,” he said of their support.
The seemingly contradictory messages illustrate the conundrum facing a president still reeling from a disastrous performance in last month's debate with former President Donald J. Trump. To continue to fund his presidential campaign, Mr. Biden will likely need the support of wealthy Democrats who have been the most vocal in calling for him to end his reelection efforts.
A politician who has long relied on the party establishment for campaign funding, Biden has sought to blunt their opposition by adopting a surprisingly populist, anti-elite message that in some ways overlaps with Trump's.
Major donors have warned that a Biden lead would cost Democrats the White House and lower-ranking races. A growing number of donors have called, at first quietly and then publicly, for Biden to step aside and replace him with a candidate, threatening to withhold contributions if that doesn't happen.
As Biden's campaign seeks to court wealthy Democrats, including by planning fundraising receptions despite uncertain interest, the president has publicly cast the backlash from big donors as a sign he will champion ordinary people against wealthy interests. But polls show that many rank-and-file Democrats also have deep concerns about his age.
“The voters, and only the voters, will decide who the Democratic nominee will be,” Trump wrote in a letter to Democratic lawmakers Monday morning, “not the media, not the pundits, not big donors, not any select group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned.”
“I get really annoyed with the elites,” Biden said in an interview on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” on Monday, naming big donors. “I want their support, but that's not why I'm running.”
The defiant message comes amid new financial realities for his campaign.
If Biden pulls ahead, he will likely need to turn to small donors to make up for a decline in big donors as the campaign enters a period of intense spending on advertising and voter mobilization.
If he can tap into the anti-elite sentiment among his party's small donors and weather the post-debate turmoil, he will join more populist politicians such as Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have raised big sums from small donors by complaining about unfair treatment by the establishment.
“We know that high visibility and tensions can produce an instantaneous flood of small donations, and that anger, resentment and outrage are powerful motivators in politics, even for small donors,” Richard H. Pildes, a New York University law professor who has studied the role of small donors in driving political polarization, said in an email. “It may also be that a conflict is emerging between the Democratic base that wants to keep Biden in office and a more 'elite' faction of big donors who want an alternative.”
Small donors have long been valued in politics as a sign of grassroots enthusiasm and a sustainable source of funding because they can give repeatedly without hitting contribution limits. Advances in online, email and mobile fundraising applications have allowed campaigns to use large events as opportunities to solicit donations from supporters of average means.
Eitan D. Hirsch, a political science professor at Tufts University who studies the motivations of political donors, said small donors tend to give “from the heart.” “Big donors give from their heads rather than their hearts,” he said, predicting that Biden's campaign will see “a decline in big donors and a relative increase in the proportion of small donors.”
Carol L. Hamilton, a Los Angeles lawyer who serves on Biden's national finance committee, said Biden “has people who may not be multi-million or hundreds of thousands of dollars donors, but who are interested, who are going to vote, and who by donating a few dollars now — $5, $25 — are expressing their opinion that this president should continue in the race and are showing their support for the president.”
Hamilton participated in the president's conference call with donors on Monday and said, “The people that I spoke to were given great reassurance by the president on that call.” She questioned how many big donors have abandoned Biden. “We're not seeing any major defections at all,” she said. “Certainly, we've had a few defections.”
Hours after the call, the Biden campaign announced that it had received its largest donation, $929,600, from former retail executive Peter Lowey to its Democratic committee fund. The campaign also sent out a fundraising email asking for $25, which the campaign called “the largest email donation of its kind ever received.”
“We know $25 doesn't amount to much compared to Trump's millions,” the message read, “but we promise you that your $25, combined with the support of the thousands of people donating right now, will make a huge difference.”
“Our grassroots donors have shown up in full force, breaking records multiple times over the last two weeks, and across our donor base, we will continue to raise the funds we need to defeat Donald Trump on the ground and on the air in the November election,” Biden campaign spokesman Charles Luttwak said in a statement Tuesday.
Biden has raised more money from small donors than Trump so far this term, a reversal from the 2020 matchup, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan watchdog site Open Secrets.
In 2016, when mainstream Republicans were turning against Trump, he touted his small-dollar fundraising while criticizing big donors, and he quietly courted the same wealthy activists.
After Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in May, he galvanized his small donor base and raised about $53 million within 24 hours, breaking a Republican online record. The fundraising helped Trump close the fundraising gap against Biden, who had held a cash advantage for much of the campaign.
Due to his post-conviction approval rating surge, Trump and his party had $235 million in their bank accounts at the start of June, while Biden and his party had $212 million.
In June, the president raised more money than Trump thanks to post-debate fundraising, but even this month he still has less cash on hand – $285 million for Trump to Biden's $240 million.
According to the Biden campaign, of the $38 million the campaign raised in the four days following the debate, nearly 80% came from small donors, including the two most grassroots fundraising days of the 2024 election cycle. Overall, its best fundraising month was June, when it raised $127 million, about two-thirds of which came from grassroots donors.
Campaign finance reports detailing the fundraising efforts won't be released until later this month.
An Open Secrets analysis of campaign finance reports from the early days of the campaign found that Biden raised a much lower percentage of his money from small donors — roughly 43 percent — who donated less than $200 each.
“Ninety-seven percent of the people who donated to us were people who made under $200 a year. So they gave under $200,” Biden claimed on “Morning Joe.” He called it “the largest group ever. I'm not sure, but I think it's true.” (This claim is difficult to independently verify, because campaigns are not required to publicly disclose individual donors who give under $200.)
John Morgan, a Florida lawyer who said he raised more than $1 million for the Biden campaign, said in a text message that he doesn't believe the increase in small donations will offset the defections of big donors.
But Morgan, who was planning Biden's summer fundraising, which is now in flux, predicted big donors would return to the president's campaign if Biden remains on the campaign trail.
“If not, Trump wins,” he wrote.
Rachel Shorely Contributed report.
