As Democratic candidates begin to file their paperwork to run for president in 2020, they know they will be facing a well-financed opponent. President Donald Trump’s campaign reported $19.2 million in cash on hand Thursday in a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
The campaign’s three committees reported raising $21 million in the final three months of 2018. That number is on pace with previous quarters in 2018. And as in previous reports, the campaign relied heavily on donors giving less than $200, raising three out of every four dollars from small donors.
The president’s brisk small-money fundraising contrasts with the performance of many Republican congressional candidates during the midterm elections, who relied more heavily on donors giving larger amounts as they struggled to keep pace with their Democratic opponents’ fundraising.
Some Republicans grumbled that Trump’s campaign vacuumed up donations that could have been used more effectively in the midterms by House candidates trying to retain their seats. The Democrats gained 40 House seats.
Trump did campaign aggressively for Republican congressional candidates, and his campaign finance reports reflect that, showing increased spending in the final quarter of 2018. The Trump campaign spent $23 million in the last three months of the year, including $8 million on television and online media, and more than $1.5 million on expenses associated with his rallies.
It also spent nearly $180,000 on rent at Trump Tower and expenses at other Trump properties. And it continued to spend big on merchandise, shelling out $2.4 million on T-shirts, banners, buttons, stickers and, of course, hats.
Trump’s campaign spent $838,000 on legal fees in the fourth quarter, including payments to two firms that have represented the president and his associates in matters related to investigations of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. The firm of Marc E. Kasowitz, a longtime lawyer for Trump in New York, was paid $323,000, while Jones Day, which also handles the campaign’s election law compliance, was paid $188,000.
More than $100,000 was paid to LaRocca Hornik Rosen Greenberg & Blaha LLP, which is representing the president in a lawsuit brought by protesters who claim they were roughed up by Trump’s security personnel outside of Trump Tower in September 2015.
Separate from Trump’s campaign, a fund created to help pay legal bills for campaign, transition and administration employees and consultants, Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust LLC, raised $500,000 in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to an Internal Revenue Service filing. It showed that all of the money came from the Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam Adelson.
None of the prominent Democrats running or expected to run in 2020 filed presidential fundraising numbers Thursday, but some who are holding another office reported substantial sums of cash that they will be able to transfer to a presidential run. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has declared her intent to seek the presidency, closed the year with more than $11 million in her Senate campaign account, and New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, finished the year with $10 million.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who unlike Warren and Gillibrand was not up for re-election in 2018, trailed with just over $1 million in cash.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.