President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign announced Friday that it had notched record fundraising figures in the hours during and after his State of the Union address.
The incumbent Democrat's 2024 campaign is looking take the momentum from Thursday’s address – and the seemingly certain Biden-Trump rematch further cemented on Super Tuesday – directly to voters on the road in March, announcing a new battleground state swing and ad blitz.
On Friday, the campaign announced Biden’s high-stakes election-year address powered its best fundraising day since the incumbent president kicked off his reelection bid nearly a year ago.
Biden’s team first logged its most lucrative single hour from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday – an hour that included the president’s entrance into the House chamber and the first half hour of his speech. The record was broken in the 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. hour and then again from 11 p.m. to midnight, the campaign told reporters on a call Friday.
The campaign is now hoping to convert the energy into what it has billed a “Month of Action” in March, launching a fresh travel swing through battleground states and a new ad blitz.
“Thanks to the unprecedented grassroots support we received this month, we will dramatically expand our volunteer engagement, scale up our battleground staff, launch our coalition groups and invest in new paid media campaigns,” Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters on Friday.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will personally touch down in every swing state, Chavez Rodriguez added, with the effort kicking off less than 24 hours after the State of the Union with a visit from Biden to Pennsylvania and Harris’ stop in Arizona on Friday.
Saturday will see Biden hit Georgia and Harris make a trip to Nevada. Next week, the president will hit the road again, stopping in New Hampshire on Monday, Wisconsin on Wednesday and Michigan on Thursday.
“We firmly believe that this race is going to be won on the ground, across key states, that are core to our multiple pathways to 270,” Chavez Rodriguez said. “And everything we're doing this month to kick off the general election is grounded in that premise.”
Coinciding with the swing state tour, Biden’s campaign is launching a $30 million ad buy over six weeks, which deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty noted amounts to more than the campaign spent in all of 2023.
We're going to be reaching voters through television, connected TV and other digital platforms to start to cement the choice of this election, bringing the president's message from last night directly to voters where they consume their media,” Flaherty said. “We will be making sizable buys and Hispanic, African American and AANHPI outlets and radio.”
It comes as this week made it all but certain that November will be a rematch between 2020 rivals Biden and former President Donald Trump following Super Tuesday – which saw the pair dominate their respective parties’ nominating contests and led to Trump’s last remaining well-known challenger Nikki Haley end her bid for the White House. Campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon referred to the moment as a “key juncture” in this year’s presidential election.
“This is the key juncture where we are in the general election when there's a clear choice for the American people,” O'Malley Dillon told reporters. “This campaign is really built to make sure that we're doing the work that we need to to make that choice clear, and in really stark contrast to what we're seeing on the other side.”
Campaign finance reports for January 2024 showed Trump’s principal campaign committee ended the month with less than $30.5 million in the bank; Biden’s main committee, on the other hand, rounded out January with $56 million in cash reserves.
Trump’s cash on hand figure for January marked a decrease from the $33 million he had in the bank to start the new year, and it stands in contrast with the $10 million Biden added to his cash chest over the month.
According to filings, Trump recorded raising $8.8 million in the first month of the election year while Biden’s principal campaign committee brought in $15 million.
The filings for January include just the figures for Trump and Biden’s main campaign committees. But the incumbent president’s campaign on Wednesday touted its $130 million war chest among all of Biden’s fundraising entities, which includes his other joint fundraising committees and the the Democratic National Committee.
Among all of those entities, the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign said, Biden notched $42 million toward his reelection effort in January.