Hillary Clinton is racing across red states and blue states at a frenetic pace for a frontrunner, hoping to show that her early dominance in the Democratic presidential race will also translate into a muscular financial advantage as the campaign’s first fundraising period ends next week.
The first true measure of Clinton’s strength will come when she reveals how much money she has collected during the first three months of her candidacy. The specific figure is guarded with high secrecy inside her campaign, but several party fundraisers told CNN they believe she is on track to raise more than $30 million.
For a famous candidate who is universally known, Clinton has been working the circuit with unusual fervor to rebuild her base of donors and to inject an element of enthusiasm into the campaign, rather than sitting back and waiting for checks to arrive. Her Rolodex may be golden, but several fundraisers say it’s also somewhat outdated, adding a layer of complexity to her early efforts.
She has personally attended nearly 50 closed-door fundraising events so far, according to a CNN tally, which vastly outnumbers the introductory sessions she has held with voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond.
Attendance figures provided by campaign aides suggest Clinton-headlined events have brought in around $21 million, according to a CNN analysis. Her top aides and operatives have headlined dozens more.
A concert featuring Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett on Wednesday night in New York is intended to entice donors before her June 30 fundraising deadline. It comes on the heels of a star-studded series of events last weekend in California, where a bearded Leonardo Dicaprio attended a fundraiser at Tobey Maguire’s home.
But the majority of Clinton’s fundraising activity has been far removed from the bright lights of Broadway or Hollywood. This week alone, she’s visited Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri, standing before small audiences to collect checks of no more than $2,700, the maximum allowed for the primary campaign.
Here in south St. Louis County on Tuesday night, she arrived at Grant’s Farm, the 281-acre ancestral home of the Busch family, which is named after former President Ulysses S. Grant. Trudy Busch Valentine, heir to the well-known brewing family, hosted the event.
Two campaign volunteers checked people outside the gates, asking attendees to provide photo identification to verify they had paid for the event. A line of cars idled outside, waiting to get in. A campaign aide said 250 people were on hand and gave the maximum amount, which means she raised at least $675,000 for her afternoon in St. Louis.
The fundraiser has been on her calendar for weeks. But Clinton added a public event to her schedule at a church in nearby Florissant on Tuesday, where she addressed the South Carolina church shooting, which she called an “act of racist terrorism.”
The fundraising activity of the Clinton campaign is seldom discussed beyond the closed-door sessions. Only a few hosts contacted by CNN were willing to talk about the events they organized for Clinton’s campaign.
“It was an amazing event,” said Ellen Luger, the former head of the General Mills Foundation who hosted a fundraiser at her Minneapolis, Minnesota, home on Monday. Then, she quickly rang off, saying: “Bye.”
Cindy Simon Skjodt, who hosted a fundraiser in Carmel, Indiana, said Clinton’s remarks during the event were “engaging” and full of policy, but not wonky.
“Her remarks are brief,” said an equally brief Skjodt, adding that Clinton spent more time taking pictures and shaking hands at the event than speaking.
The Clinton campaign has announced its intention to raise at least $100 million before the end of the year. But several fundraisers told CNN the effort has been more laborious than they expected, with some Democrats lacking a sense of excitement or urgency about the need to contribute.
With enthusiasm growing among some liberals for the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton has redoubled her efforts to post a strong fundraising figure when the report is filed with the Federal Election Commission by July 15.
In her first presidential race, Clinton raised primary and general election money together, a strategy that allowed her to collect twice as much. She raised $26 million during her first fundraising period of 2007, but only some of it could be used during her primary race, with the remainder returned to donors after she lost to Barack Obama.
This time, campaign manager Robby Mook announced that Clinton would only raise primary money — a maximum of $2,700 per check. This approach raised the burden for fundraisers, but also sent the signal that she was intent on fighting for the Democratic nomination.
Alan Patricof, the co-host of one of the Clinton’s first fundraisers in New York, said the campaign was intently focusing on a robust fundraising report in July to quiet any doubts about the strength of her candidacy.
“You do the math of how many fundraisers you have to have to get to $25 million,” he told CNN. “You just have to have a lot of people contributing.”
At one of her first events, Patricof said Clinton made clear the “importance at the early stage, were the donors who were able to contribute or raise more significant amounts.”
After that, he said, she would focus on smaller donors.
Clinton has spent far more time talking to donors than ordinary voters during the opening phase of her campaign. She is asking her top donors, known as Hillstarters, to recruit 10 people to each contribute $2,700.
“It is a warm gathering, these are not state of the union speeches,” said Robert Zimmerman, a donor who attended one of Clinton’s early New York fundraisers and is a member of her Hillstarter fundraising group.
She has held fundraising events in at least 17 states, including: Georgia, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Washington. She has also dispatched her top campaign advisers to attend fundraising events across the country.
“There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all fundraising strategy,” said Josh Schwerin, a campaign spokesman. “We’re using a wide array of techniques to cultivate a diverse donor base and putting a premium on growing our list to give as many people as possible the opportunity to play a role in this campaign.”