The coordinated campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris raised $361 million in August, nearly three times as much as the $130 million collected by the coordinated effort of her Republican rival, Donald Trump, giving her a clear financial edge with two months to go before Election Day, her campaign announced Friday.
Harris’s larger campaign, which boasts hundreds more staff, dozens more offices and a bigger advertising budget than Trump, also ended the month with more cash on hand. She has $404 million in cash to spend, her campaign said, compared with $295 million in cash at the end of August that the Trump campaign announced on Wednesday. The numbers cannot be verified until financial disclosures are filed later this month.
“What we have got right now is the kind of grassroots enthusiasm that money can’t buy,” deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty said about the month’s haul, which he attributed in part to several high-profile events, including the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as a running mate, the Democratic convention and grassroots enthusiasm for her campaign.
He said the scale of the Harris operation, which has grown to include about 2,000 staff and hundreds of thousands of volunteers, means the money is needed to close out the race. “It gives us a really significant cash advantage, but that cash advantage is a bit deceptive because all that money is committed to the things we need to do to win.”
Harris has raised more than $615 million for her campaign and associated Democratic committees since she took over the campaign from President Joe Biden on July 21, the campaign said. The August donations came from nearly 3 million donors, including 1.3 million donors who gave for the first time this cycle. Flaherty said that among those new donors, 3 in 4 had not given to Biden’s campaign during the 2020 presidential race.
The totals include money that is given in smaller checks to the Harris campaign, as well as bigger donations to associated Democratic Party committees that can coordinate their efforts with the Harris campaign. The campaign said more than 60 percent of August donors were women and almost one-fifth of donors were registered Republicans or independents.
“Make no mistake: this election will be hard-fought and hard-won,” Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “But with the undeniable, organic support we are seeing, we are making sure we are doing everything possible to mobilize our coalition to defeat Donald Trump once and for all.”
The Trump campaign announced its August campaign haul on Wednesday, while expressing confidence that it had “the resources needed to propel President Trump’s campaign to victory.”
“With Republicans united and a growing number of Independents and disaffected Democrats crossing partisan lines, the Trump-Vance campaign has momentum for the final stretch of the race,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement. “These fundraising numbers from August are a reflection of that movement and will propel President Trump’s America First movement back to the White House so we can undo the terrible failures of Harris and Biden.”