According to a report, Kamala Harris raised an unprecedented sum of around $500 million in the first month of her candidacy.
Four sources told Reuters that the huge sum was raised in just four weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket on July 21. In that time, the vice president has already broken fundraising records as donors sought to add firepower to her campaign in the close race against Donald Trump.
The Harris campaign said it raised $200 million in the first week after Biden withdrew from the race – a dramatic reversal of the party’s fundraising numbers in the final stretch of Biden’s candidacy. That $200 million was also more than the $138.7 million the Trump campaign said it raised in all of July.
By contrast, Harris’ team said they raised $310 million in July – a staggering figure that her campaign says pushes the total amount Harris and Biden have raised to over $1 billion. According to the campaign, that’s the fastest way a presidential campaign has ever reached the 10-digit mark in history.
At the beginning of August, the Harris team had $377 million on hand – about $50 million more than the $327 million in cash reported by the Trump camp.
Harris has reclaimed the Democrats’ fundraising lead, which the party lost after Trump’s conviction in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. During the historic trial, which Trump called a political persecution, Republican donors showered the former president with support, helping Trump wipe out Biden’s long-standing cash lead.
Harris’s lightning-fast victory at the top of the Democratic ticket reinvigorated her party’s donors: Her campaign raised $81 million in the 24 hours after Biden announced his withdrawal from the race on July 21. The Harris team said it was the largest single-day total in American history.
Super PACs supporting Trump, however, continue to receive strong support. Timothy Mellon, the conservative billionaire and heir to the Mellon banking fortune, donated another $50 million to the pro-Trump organization Make America Great Again Inc. last month. Since 2022, he has donated a total of $126.5 million to the PAC, according to The Washington Postincluding $100 million in the last three months alone.
Mellon previously donated $25 million to a super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the independent candidate who, according to his running mate Nicole Shanahan, is considering ending his campaign to “align himself with Donald Trump.” Trump says he would “probably” consider Kennedy for a Cabinet post that RFK Jr. has sought in exchange for his support of the former president.
