President Joe Biden raised more than $42 million for his presidential campaign and the Democratic Party in January, a sizable haul that shows the party’s donor class is still firmly behind the president despite anxiety around his reelection run.
The campaign announced it ended the month with $130 million on hand, the largest figure amassed by a Democratic presidential candidate at this point in the campaign cycle. The Biden campaign and Democrats have so far outpaced former President Donald Trump and the Republican primary field in fundraising as well.
The January numbers are a bright spot for the president’s team amidst a period of intense Democratic handwringing over the campaign’s operations, low polling and a fresh spotlight on Biden’s age and memory in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur’s report. The president and Democrats have consistently posted high fundraising totals – nearly $278 million since April – from high dollar events and grassroots pushes, and January marked the campaign’s best fundraising month with small dollar donors, the campaign said.
The January fundraising disclosure comes as the president is set to embark on what is expected to be a lucrative three-day fundraising swing through California. The trip, which includes fundraisers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Los Altos Hills, is expected to raise as much as $10 million, a source familiar with the plans told CNN.
The West Coast push is playing out less than two weeks after Hur’s report put the president’s age and mental acuity front and center in the 2024 campaign. Hur portrayed the 81-year-old president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and with “diminished faculties in advancing age” – passages in the report that hit on the president’s biggest political vulnerability heading into the…
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