Vice President Kamala Harris has raised $200 million in less than a week for her presidential bid, her campaign announced Sunday, as she hopes the surge will improve her chances of defeating President Donald Trump.
The announcement comes amid an intensifying battle between Harris and Trump on the campaign trail.
U.S. President Joe Biden gave up on re-election just a week ago and nominated his vice president as his successor, a move that has dramatically changed the dynamics of the election campaign.
Since then, Harris has quickly unified the Democratic Party behind her candidacy and has gained a modest advantage over Trump in opinion polls compared with Biden's record.
She is vetting potential vice presidential candidates and plans to announce her choice within the next two weeks.
But at a fundraiser in Massachusetts on Saturday, Harris acknowledged that Trump still has the edge in the election, which will be held in early November, 100 days from now.
“We are the underdogs in this race, but this is a people-powered race,” Harris told donors.
One of Harris' main tasks will be to boost fundraising to make up for a drop in donations for Biden after his disastrous debate defeat against Trump in late June.
Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler called the $200 million first-week total “record-breaking.”
“Of those, 66 percent came from first-time donors, further evidence of the tremendous grassroots support for the vice president,” he said.
At a rally in Minnesota on Saturday night, two weeks after the assassination attempt, Trump slammed Harris, calling her “evil” as he sought to adjust his campaign to target her instead of Biden.
“If a crazy liberal like Kamala Harris gets elected, the American Dream will die,” Trump said.
President Trump briefly called for “unity” in American politics after the attempt on his life, but on Saturday he suggested the time for flattery was over.
“People say, 'I think he's changed. I think he's different from where he was two weeks ago. Something has affected him,'” Trump told the crowd. “No, I haven't changed. Maybe I've gotten worse, because I get angry at the incompetence that I see every day.”
President Trump drew criticism on Friday after telling a group of Christian conservatives that if they cooperated in this year's presidential election, they “won't have to vote anymore” in four years.
Harris and her campaign have also focused on attacking Trump. She has sought to highlight that he is a threat to fundamental American freedoms, from abortion rights to voting rights to economic security. She has also denounced Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, as bizarre and extreme.
“As you may be aware, Donald Trump has told outrageous lies about my record, and some of the things he and his running mate have said are, well, just bizarre. I mean, you put that in a box,” she said Saturday.
Trump was leading national polls by 3.2 percentage points when Biden dropped out of the race a week ago, according to the Fivethirtyeight.com average, but there have been signs since then that Harris is closing the gap.
According to a Wall Street Journal poll, Trump leads Harris by 2 percentage points among head-to-head registered voters, but trails her by 1 percentage point when third-party candidates are included. Polls in battleground states also suggest the race is close, with a Fox News poll showing Trump and Harris neck-and-neck in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican who was once a critic of Trump but now supports him, acknowledged that Ms Harris' entry into the race would create a “whole new race” and give Democrats “momentum” heading into next month's convention.
But he also said the “honeymoon” period would end in September and Trump would be able to deliver a better message as long as he avoided “personal attacks” and focused on his policy differences with Republicans, including on the economy and immigration.
“I hope that the numbers and the polls will help Donald Trump understand what's worked and what's not worked,” Sununu told ABC.
But on the same television show, Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker said the winds were clearly shifting in Harris' favor.
“Voters are energized and Democrats are ready. You've seen hundreds of thousands of people signing up to volunteer,” he said.
