Harris, Trump, and their allies have roughly $1 billion. Now the race is on to spend it.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have war chests overflowing with nearly a billion dollars (at least) as they enter the final phase of the 2024 campaign. Now the sprint begins to spend it all.
The campaigns have been unveiling plans in recent weeks for a massive blitz of ads aimed at nearly any screen swing state voters may come across over the coming two or so months.
The latest data available through the beginning of August showed Harris, Trump, and their directly allied groups with bank accounts totaling a combined amount of around $700 million, according to the campaign finance trackers at OpenSecrets, including more than $370 million raised directly by the two campaign operations.
Outside super-PACs backing one of the candidates also reported another $200 million or so in the bank.
And even these eye-popping totals are surely now significantly higher after an August that featured another wave of fundraising efforts, the Democratic National Convention, and a nonstop series of political headlines.
Perhaps only one thing is abundantly clear as the candidates enter the fall campaign neck and neck: neither campaign is going to be short of funds for the forthcoming sprint.
Whether the television and phone screens of swing state residents can handle the onslaught perhaps remains to be seen.
How they are planning to spend it
From now until Election Day, the clear priority for all of this money is ad after ad after ad — a contrast to the earlier part of the contest when a decent chunk of campaign cash went to hiring staffers and opening field offices.
The Harris-Walz campaign has been the most specific about their plans for the fall, recently announcing plans to reserve $370 million in advertising that will begin after Labor Day and run through November.
The money is divided between $170 million for traditional TV spots and $200 million for digital ads.
The campaign is calling that latter figure the largest digital reservation in the history of American politics and announced this week that much of their initial ads using that money will be focused on the controversial "Project 2025" plans that have been put forth by close Trump allies (but disavowed by Trump himself).
Ahead of a debate between Harris and Trump on Sept. 10, "our campaign won't waste a minute communicating to the voters who will decide this election every single day," Harris-Walz principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks promised in a statement.
The main super-PAC supporting Harris has also announced plans to spend $250 million on its own slate of ads between the Democratic convention and Election Day.
Former President Trump's campaign has so far been less clear about its intentions. But AdImpact, a media tracking service, has reported on millions of dollars in TV spots already in the works.
All told, approximately $438 million dollars of TV reservations have already been made between the two sides, according to the group.
Viewers around the country will face an onslaught of ads. Pennsylvania, as expected, will bear the brunt, with over $140 million in television advertising set to be aired in the coming months.
Reservations in Presidential Battlegrounds#PAPol:??$70.8M??$70.6M#GAPol:??$39M??$38.7M#MIPol:??$55.2M??$6.6M#AZPol:??$34.9M??$9.9M#WIPol:??$33.1M??$3.5M#NCPol:??$26M??$2.8M#NVPol:??$19.5M??$1.4M
Omaha market: ??$7M??$0— AdImpact Politics (@AdImpact_Pol) August 30, 2024
And much more is surely in the offing. Trump himself has also signaled that significant campaign resources will be devoted to organizing and training watchers to appear at polling sites on Election Day.
This is an effort he said will "protect the vote," but his critics charge it could also be an effort to intimidate Democratic-leaning voters.
Trump has also outsourced to allied super-PAC groups much of his campaign's ground-game efforts for getting his voters to the polls. Many have noted it's a risky strategy that will leave him with less direct control of this central campaign function.
Ongoing fundraising efforts
Meanwhile, the effort to raise even more money has barely slowed despite all of the cash already in hand.
The Harris-Walz campaign recently announced that in the month since President Joe Biden ended his campaign on July 21, the Harris-Walz effort has raised an astonishing $540 million, but it remains to be seen how much of that fell in the July or August reporting period.
And the candidates — especially the two vice presidential nominees — are still sneaking in plenty of fundraising stops.
This Labor Day period itself includes a slew of reported fundraising stops from Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Anna Wintour raising money for Harris in the Hamptons, a wealthy enclave near New York City, to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp raising money for Trump in Atlanta.
The Harris campaign has also found a novel new fundraising source in for form of massive Zoom calls for different interest groups.
The effort began with hundreds of thousands joining meetings (and donating millions) around groups like Win with Black Women and White Dudes for Harris.
Recent days featured targeted events like a YIMBYs for Harris livestream looking to capitalize on a recent Harris focus on housing; it raised nearly $100,000 for the campaign.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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