“That’s more than any other presidential campaign so far,” the campaign wrote to supporters Friday, calling it “AMAZING news.”
Biden’s campaign said 96,926 people had contributed to his campaign in the first day, with 97 percent of donations below $200.
Biden’s team has viewed his early fundraising showing as important, not just for the infusion of money it provides but also as a metric by which his nascent candidacy will be measured. His campaign sent multiple emails asking for donations Thursday, and he attended a high-dollar fundraiser in the evening.
Biden and his advisers spent recent days privately urging major donors about the importance of his financial showing in the first hours and days of the contest. They pointed, in particular, to the roughly $6 million hauls from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas as benchmarks against which the former vice president would be judged.
Biden held a conference call Wednesday, the eve of his announcement, to rally and consolidate support from potential top contributors.
But the bigger question for Biden was how he would fare among donors making small contributions online, who have become the new currency of Democratic politics. Unlike Sanders, who ran for president in 2016, and O’Rourke, who set fundraising records as a Senate candidate in 2018, Biden did not enter with race with a pre-existing large and active small-donor base.
As the former running mate of President Barack Obama, Biden does have access to the same email list that raised so much money for the ticket in 2008 and 2012. But the fundraising power of an email list atrophies relatively quickly, according to digital campaign experts, and seven years is a particularly long time to lie fallow.
Adding to the perception that Biden was starting from behind financially, some federal officeholders — such as Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — had more than $10 million ready to transfer from their Senate accounts to support their 2020 runs. Biden began at $0.
Biden has the advantage of national name recognition and broad popularity among Democrats. But he is also expected to quickly assemble a robust staff that must be paid.
On Thursday, his campaign announced 26 “key campaign hires” who will work for Biden at the national level, and it has even more people lined up in the states that will begin the nominating contest: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
Biden spent his first evening as a presidential candidate at the Philadelphia-area home of David L. Cohen, a top executive at Comcast and a former political operative who is one of the Democratic Party’s leading fundraisers.
A roster of prominent Pennsylvania politicians were listed as hosts of the event, as well as, among others, Daniel J. Hilferty, chief executive of major health insurer Independence Health Group, the parent of Independence Blue Cross.
“It’s gauche to talk about money, so I’m not going to talk about money,” Cohen said at the fundraiser, according to a recording of his remarks. “But all I’m going to say is that once again this group has produced an event that is off the charts, beyond anyone’s expectations.”
Biden’s rivals took note of his entry. Sanders, O’Rourke, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee all emailed supporters with Biden’s name in the subject line Thursday to gin up their own donations.
The message from Sanders’ campaign was pointed about how Biden was spending his evening. “It’s a big day in the Democratic primary and we’re hoping to end it strong,” the email said. “Not with a fundraiser in the home of a corporate lobbyist, but with an overwhelming number of individual donations.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.