Harris raises $500m in month since joining race

Kamala Harris has raised $500 million in the month since she became the Democratic candidate as her White House campaign continues to break fundraising records.
Harris, 59, is raising more than Donald Trump by almost four to one as she overhauls his lead in the polls amid a surge of excitement among Democratic voters and donors.
The unprecedented cash haul, first reported by Reuters, reflects the way Harris has upended the 2024 election since jumping into the race after President Biden decided to step aside a month ago. Funding for the Democratic campaign had dried up following Biden’s disastrous performance against Trump in their presidential debate in June.
Several big donors halted funding unless Biden dropped out, and a flood of cash has been unleashed since Harris moved to head the Democratic ticket. The vice-president raised $200 million in the first week of her campaign alone as she wrapped up the support to become the Democratic nominee.
Much of that money came from small-dollar donors, underscoring the renewed excitement among grassroots Democrats as she breathed new life into the campaign — drawing thousands of supporters to her rallies during a tour of the battleground states.
Harris raised $310 million in July despite joining the race only in the last ten days of the month. Trump’s campaign said that it raised $138.7 million in the whole of July, just more than a quarter of the haul banked by Harris. The Republican nominee had overtaken Biden in the fundraising stakes before the president stepped aside.
Harris will address the Democratic convention in Chicago on Thursday evening, when she will formally accept the party’s nomination for president. Her campaign expects another bumper haul of donations from the event as she continues to extend her cash advantage over Trump in what is believed to be the most expensive White House race in history.
Campaign cash is critical for advertising and ground operations to win over undecided voters and bring people to the polls. Harris is also spending ten times as much as the Trump campaign on digital advertising to broaden her outreach to voters. The vice-president has booked a $370 million advert blitz for the weeks until polling day, focusing on the swing states expected to decide the election.
Barack Obama, the former president who headlined the convention with his wife, Michelle, on Tuesday evening, has also offered his fundraising star power to Harris for the final weeks of the campaign.
Obama attended two lavish fundraisers for Biden but was instrumental behind the scenes in the president’s decision to quit the race. The former president served as a sounding board for worried Democrats and donors who feared that Biden was leading the party to defeat in November.