Vice President Kamala Harris has raised more than $1 billion in less than three months as a presidential candidate, according to three people with knowledge of her fundraising haul, a remarkable sum of money that has remade the race against former President Donald Trump.
The $1 billion haul, which encompasses money raised for her campaign and affiliated party committees, including the Democratic National Committee, is being spent on a wave of television and digital advertising and an expansive operation of offices and staff in the seven battleground states and beyond. The historic sum does not include money donated to allied super political action committees.
The Harris campaign declined to comment. The campaign has yet to announce how much it raised in September, partly out of concern that bragging about the gush of donations could diminish donor interest in the race’s final weeks, people briefed on the strategy said. The Harris campaign also remains concerned about the ability of billionaire-funded Republican super PACs to impact the race.
The federal reports detailing the fundraising totals for September are required to be made public later this month.
The $1 billion threshold is more than Trump has announced raising in all of 2024. He has raised around $853 million this calendar year in concert with the party, according to a tally of his campaign’s public statements.
Past presidential candidates, including Joe Biden and Trump four years ago, have raised more than $1 billion together with their parties. Trump announced surpassing that mark in July 2020 after he had been raising funds for his reelection for multiple years.
It is the sheer speed with which Harris has reached that mark that is notable. No presidential candidate is believed to have ever raised so much money so fast after entering a race. Of course, no one in modern political history has replaced a party’s presumptive nominee in the middle of the general election.
Harris more than doubled Trump’s cash haul in both July and August. She raised $361 million in August compared to his $130 million. And her campaign and the former Biden campaign combined to raise $310 million in July compared to $139 million for Trump.
She is expected to easily double the $160 million that Trump raised in September. She raised $72 million in just three events late last month: $27 million at a single event in New York and then $55 million across two California events.
The sums are so large because both candidates are raising funds into jumbo committees that can collect checks of more than $900,000 by including state parties nationwide and the national party.
Harris hit the $1 billion mark in less than 80 days, according to the people with knowledge of her haul, who were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
After she replaced Biden as the de facto Democratic nominee July 21, the outburst of online donations was organic and enormous. Harris raised $200 million in her first week — more than Biden had raised with the party in the last six months of 2023.
In fact, Harris has raised so much money that, in an unusual move in early September, she directed her joint accounts with the party to send $25 million to other party committees focused on downballot races for the House, Senate, governor and even state legislatures.
Much of the funds have come from online contributors.
In the 80 full days since she declared her candidacy, the Democratic donation platform ActBlue has processed about $1.5 billion in contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, compared to $587 million ActBlue had received in the preceding 81 days, according to the site’s online tracker.
Harris’ fundraising has been led by the same team that had been previously raising money for Biden.
Colleen Coffey and Michael Pratt are her finance co-directors, focusing on raising money from larger donors. Jessica Porter is her grassroots fundraising director, who oversees the online operation. Rufus Gifford is the finance chair for the Harris-Walz campaign, and Chris Korge is the finance chair for the Harris Victory Fund with the party.
Harris has supplemented that team with several new fundraisers with close ties to her, including Stephanie Daily Smith, Stefanie Roumeliotes and Kristin Bertolina Faust, whom she named a co-finance chair with Gifford.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
