Thanks to a tidal wave of fundraising following his conviction in the first criminal trial of a former or current president, Donald Trump has all but erased President Biden's once massive fundraising advantage in their 2024 election rematch.
In May, for a second straight month, the former president and the Republican National Committee significantly outraised Biden and the Democratic National Committee. And the president's formidable cash-on-hand advantage over Trump has seemingly evaporated.
The Biden campaign's months-long lead in the cash dash allowed his team to drown out Trump on the airwaves and to build an impressive ground game operation in comparison to the Trump campaign's much more frugal foundations.
But Trump's fundraising boost since clinching the GOP nomination in early March, and his surge since being convicted of 34 felony counts in his New York City trial, now allow him to match Biden in the ad wars and to potentially build a sizable ground operation.
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While Biden's campaign has spent upwards of $65 million to carpet the airwaves with ads in support of president's re-election, according to AdImpact, a leading national ad tracking firm, the Trump campaign has yet to launch a general election ad buy.
But Biden's ad wars advantage may soon be challenged. Make America Great Again (MAGA) Inc., a top super PAC supporting the former president, announced a $100 million ad blitz this summer. The group's announcement came immediately after it landed a staggering $50 million contribution from conservative banking heir Timothy Mellon.
When it comes to the ground game battle, the Biden campaign on Thursday announced that it had reached 200 campaign offices and 1,000 staffers in the key battleground states that will decide the 2024 election rematch.
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"With just over four months until the election, Donald Trump couldn’t match our battleground infrastructure if he tried," Biden campaign battleground states director Dan Kanninen said in a statement.
Kanninen argued that "while Trump’s team is desperately trying to spin their lack of infrastructure as ‘strategic,’ the bottom line is that Donald Trump cannot buy back the time he has lost — and invisible campaigns don’t win."
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller pushed back, as he pointed to polls in the key battleground states that indicate Trump with a slight edge.
"What Biden could use is 1,000 more votes in states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, because he’s losing to President Trump in all of them!" Miller claimed.
Trump's campaign says that it and the RNC have offices in the key swing states, but declines to give specific numbers. The campaign reiterates that its paid staff and volunteer operation are "expanding daily."
But Trump's campaign for a couple of months has emphasized that it is building a "leaner" operation than it had in 2020 when the then-White House incumbent ran for re-election. It is planning an operation with fewer offices and staff, and to a degree outsourcing, as it relies on allied groups to beef up its ground game.
"There will definitely need to be some catching up to do for Trump to try to match the infrastructure that Biden has built," Greg Moore, a regional director for the conservative advocacy powerhouse Americans For Prosperity, told Fox News.
But Moore, a longtime veteran of the group's formidable grassroots outreach and ground game efforts, said "there's still a fantastic opportunity for the Trump team to be able to start to grow that infrastructure and focus on building out a true, authentic, grassroots strategy."
Pointing to the Trump campaign, Moore argued that "there's no question there's a ton of energy in the supporters. The level of enthusiasm among Trump's supporters is higher than the level of enthusiasm among Biden's supporters, which means while the staff gain might lean toward Biden, actually recruiting authentic volunteers is an area where Trump should have an advantage."
