President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden have different ideas about how to spend campaign cash.
Flush with cash, Trump’s campaign is shelling out millions of dollars on ads blasting the former vice president, while Biden’s camp is still staffing up as it transitions into a general election campaign.
All political candidates are currently limited in what they can do. The coronavirus pandemic has forced campaigns to move online, with candidates hosting campaign events and fundraisers from their homes. Still, OpenSecrets’ expenditures database shows how the presidential contenders’ strategies differ.
The Trump campaign spent relatively little on fundraising despite raking in more campaign cash than Biden. That’s because Trump’s joint fundraising committees that distribute contributions to the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee handle those costs. Make America Great Again, Trump’s committee that attracts small-dollar donors online, has spent nearly $76 million on fundraising expenses. Trump Victory spent $21 million on fundraising, most of which went to hosting lavish in-person events for wealthy donors.
Those joint fundraising committees also help pay salaries for Trump campaign staffers. As a result, the Trump campaign spends less than 8 percent of its money on salaries compared to 26 percent for the Biden campaign.
Biden recently launched a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee to court big-dollar donors. Its first virtual fundraiser was headlined by 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The committee encouraged attendees to give as much as $100,000.
The Trump campaign spends nearly 41 percent of its resources on media compared to 37 percent of Biden’s spending. Both candidates are lobbing attack ads at each other amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has tried to portray Biden as being sympathetic to China in its campaign ads, while Biden’s ads accuse Trump of listening to China over his own advisers during the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. Trump has released a flurry of new campaign ads this month, including one that casts Biden as confused and others that applauds the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic.
Presidential spending surpasses $2 billion mark
Presidential candidates have spent $2.3 billion, with Democratic candidates accounting for nearly $2.2 billion. Presidential spending has already blown away previous marks, cruising past the record $1.7 billion spent in the 2008 cycle.
Michael Bloomberg accounts for over $1 billion of that total. The former New York City mayor’s short-lived campaign faces class-action lawsuits from ex-staffers who were told they would be paid through the general election. Bloomberg had said he would keep his campaign going as a super PAC if he did not win the Democratic nomination. Instead, the billionaire businessman fired his campaign staffers and used a glaring loophole to give $18 million to the DNC.
Presidential campaigns spent $523 million on broadcast ads, $418 million on online ads and $307 million on unspecified media buys. Campaigns spent another $308 million paying their staffers. The most expensive presidential primary ever led to an explosion of business for some of the top campaign vendors.
Assembly, the firm that purchased Bloomberg’s television and radio ads, brought in $507 million. That’s the highest single-cycle total on record. Hawkfish, a digital firm founded by Bloomberg, received nearly $67 million from Bloomberg’s self-funded campaign. He firm is reportedly in the running to work with the Biden campaign but has struggled to find other clients.
American Made Media Consultants, an ad buying firm led by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, has received over $51 million from the Trump campaign alone. The campaign purchases all of its ads through that firm but doesn’t disclose how much it spends to pay sub-vendors, obscuring the campaign’s spending and making it difficult to identify coordination with closely tied outside groups.
Researcher Andrew Mayersohn contributed to this report.
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