President Joe Biden is heading to California for a fundraising blitz as he looks to shore up support ahead of a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump in November.
As he takes off for the Golden State, he'll do so with the wind at his back in terms of fundraising: His campaign on Tuesday announced a more than $42 million fundraising haul in January.
The president's reelection campaign is also boasting a $130 million war chest, which they called the highest ever amassed by a Democratic candidate at this point in the election cycle in U.S. history.
Biden's campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said that January was the campaign's strongest grassroots month since the campaign launched. The first month of the year saw 422,000 unique donors making 502,000 donations to the campaign.
“January’s fundraising haul – driven by a powerhouse grassroots fundraising program that continues to grow month by month – is an indisputable show of strength to start the election year,” she said in a statement. “While Team Biden-Harris continues to build on its fundraising machine, Republicans are divided – either spending money fighting Donald Trump, or spending money in support of Donald Trump’s extreme and losing agenda. Either way, judging from their weak fundraising, they’re already paying the political price.
"In an election that will determine the fate of our democracy and our freedoms, President Biden’s campaign is using its resources to build a winning operation that will meet voters where they are about the stakes of this election," she continued.
Biden's third visit to California in a little over two months will take him to Los Angeles and the Bay Area. He'll first take part in a fundraiser in Los Angeles before making stops later in the week San Francisco and Los Altos Hills. He is also set to hold an official policy event on Wednesday in Los Angeles.
The Democratic incumbent's reelection campaign also hailed the fact that it added more than 1 million emails to its distribution list in the first month of the year, and its total of more than 158,000 sustaining monthly donors.
They also noted that they raised $1 million per day in the three days following Iowa's Republican presidential caucuses, which Trump won decisively over the rest of the GOP presidential field.
“We are particularly proud that January shattered our grassroots fundraising record for a third straight month. This haul will go directly to reaching the voters who will decide this election," said Senior Communications Advisor TJ Ducklo, before seemingly adding a reference to the verdict in Trump's New York civil fraud trial. "That's reason number 355 million that we are confident President Biden and Vice President Harris will win this November.”