Bernie Sanders raised more than $20 million in January, his campaign announced Sunday, as top presidential contenders and super PACs, led by Marco Rubio’s, look to tout their fundraising prowess and bank accounts ahead of February’s caucus and primary run.
Sanders campaign says its January haul came from more than 777,000 individual contributions. That sum was raised almost entirely outside of fundraising events and comes overwhelmingly from small dollar donors, a similar groundswell that helped the campaign raise $33.6 million in the last three months of 2015
All campaigns and super PACs must file their 2015 reports with the Federal Election Commission by the end of Sunday. Some are in good shape and will hype their numbers, especially their cash-on-hand heading into the month, in order to instill donor confidence in their campaign’s ability to go the distance.
Sunday is also the first chance in six months to see what how much big donors are giving to super PACs, the outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash to help candidates.
Hillary Clinton’s top super PAC, Priorities USA, said Friday it has raised $50 million through this month, with another $42 million in pledges. Clinton’s campaign also announced it had $38 million on hand as of the end of the year.
Two other groups supporting Clinton, American Bridge and Correct the Record, brought in an additional $6 million total.
And while Sanders, who has sworn off super PACs, a group run by National Nurses United is backing the Vermont senator regardless and has raised $2.3 million, with about half of that remaining, the group reported.
Billionaires backing Marco Rubio
The best funded group of all, as of Sunday early afternoon, is Marco Rubio’s super PAC, which raised nearly $16 million in the second half of 2015 and had about $14 million on hand.
Rubio in recent months has successfully courted some of the GOP’s leading financiers, and it is showing.
Several individuals gave $1 million to the group, including Norman Braman, a Rubio mentor from Florida who has now given a total of $6 million to the super PAC. And two new billionaire donors to Rubio’s circle, Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, each gave $2.5 million to the super PAC.
Republican super PACs
The super PACs supporting Ben Carson and Rand Paul are poor, while the outside groups supporting Chris Christie and Ted Cruz are relatively rich, new campaign finance filings show.
Carson’s main super PAC, The 2016 Committee, raised $6.1 million in the second half of 2016, but spent nearly all its money and retained only $560,000 as of December 31. And Rand Paul’s authorized group, America’s Liberty PAC, has been beset by scandal — its top two operatives were once indicted — and now has poor fundraising results: it only collected $1.4 million, with only about $830,000 on hand.
Other groups are in a stronger position: John Kasich’s two super PACs, brought in over $3.6 million — much of which through smaller, five-digit checks — and had under $2 million remaining. Christie’s group, America Leads, raised $5.1 million thanks to prominent hedge-funder Steve Cohen, who sank another $2 million to the super PAC. It still had $3.3 million on hand.
Stand for Truth, a mysterious pro-Cruz super PAC that formed only recently, revealed its donors on Sunday — nearly half of the money raised by it came from the family of Adam Ross, a close Cruz friend from Texas. It still had $2.1 million in the bank.
All three of those groups, however, have spent much of their cash on television ads over the last month, which the reports would not capture.