There are two dozen people running for the chance to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Whoever wins will get the honor of being crudely and ignorantly attacked by our current corrupt and blunt object, Donald Trump. They will also receive tons of hate mail and likely death threats from deplorable “patriots.” However, getting to that place will take lots of organization, lots of hand-pressing, baby-kissing, speech-making, interview-sitting, and picture-taking across the country.
And, not to mention, money. It costs lots of money to run a campaign in our country. Advertisements must be bought, and signs and T-shirts and stickers printed. Calls made. Offices set up and staffed. Email lists must be handled and cultivated, social media accounts must be manned, videos edited, photos to meme, air travel, bus travel, train travel, hotels booked. Security is needed, public address systems need rented, and volunteers wrangled and organized and deployed strategically.
Virtually every Democratic candidate promised early on to shun big PAC money in favor of small-dollar donations. Playing on the success of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary campaign, the belief has been that in showing the American people that you are willing to save your political pandering only for the American people and not corporations or rich donors, you are attempting to keep your campaign as corruption-free as is possible in this day and age. The Washington Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee writes that as the primary season begins to move forward, the need to find larger sources of donations becomes much more attractive to the candidates. Lee reports that every single Democratic candidate except one has begun doing in-person, big-dollar fundraiser appearances. That lone holdout is Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Unfortunately for Warren, this puts her at a disadvantage.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg have recently held private fundraisers in the Bay Area, a region rich with big tech money. Even Bernie Sanders appeared for one such event In San Francisco this past Saturday. As a result of this financial handicap, the Post reports that “smaller groups of fundraisers are forming in various parts of the country to help collect larger amounts of money. These volunteer fundraisers said they have notified the campaign of their efforts to hold events, make calls and send emails on her behalf.”
There are also candidates like Joe Biden, who never made the promise to only court small-dollar donations. But for the most part, the small-dollar donation promises have not been as defining a characteristic for some of the candidates as they may have hoped. There are no clear frontrunners yet, but the top candidates seem to be Sanders, Warren, Harris, Biden, and Buttigieg. This doesn’t mean that Sens. Gillibrand, Klobucher, Cory Booker, or even Gov. Jay Inslee are completely out of the running, as long as they can continue to fund their way forward. But, with a limited amount of small-dollar donations available, not everyone can depend on that money.
There are primary debates coming up, and generating buzz and money, and showing a campaign’s financial growth, tend to breed success. It will be interesting to see how long Sen. Warren can afford to hold out, and whether Warren’s continued focus on the average American will help her get to a place where the big money donors have to send her money if they hope to meaningfully oppose Donald Trump.