Hillary Clinton Spends $19 million
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The outlay is nearly four times what Clinton spent in the first three months of her last presidential campaign, when she faced a far more competitive primary race against then-Sen. Barack Obama.
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During that 2008 campaign, Clinton and her team faced charges from donors that they were wasting money on ineffective strategic choices…This time, her staff has emphasized its “cheapskate” mentality — particularly to contributors. At her first national finance meeting in May, top donors were instructed to purchase their own lunches and fund their own transportation to various gatherings in Brooklyn.
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During the first three months of her 2008 bid, Clinton spent 14 percent of the $36 million she raised, according to FEC documents. In the launch of this campaign, she’s burned though nearly 40 percent of what she has taken in.
To be fair, everything costs more than it did in 2007.
Somewhat more interesting are her revenues. A couple of weeks ago there were reports that she’d received close to 500,000 donations and the average donation was less than $100, Slight adjustment:
Her campaign also reported that Clinton received more than 250,000 contributions, with an average donation of $144.89. About 17 percent of her contributions were $200 or less.
No figure on the number of donors. But even if contributors are structuring their contributions (i.e. ten $100 contributions instead of one $1,000), her donor base is still better than it was last time around when a high percentage maxxed out with one donation. Although she still has $100,000 campaign bundlers.
By comparison, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has fueled an insurgent challenge to Clinton with small donations. He pulled in more than $15.2 million through the end of June, and three-quarters of his donations were $200 or less.
The Guardian: Sanders FEC filing:
His campaign – keen to spin the case that his campaign is spurred by grassroots backers rather than big-money donors – released a statement saying more than 284,000 individual donors gave an average contribution of just over $35 each. Or as Sanders put it: “Our campaign is a strong grassroots movement supported by middle-class Americans from working families, not billionaires trying to buy elections.”
Jeb Bush, by comparison, raised just $368,023 from small donors.
Records show that Bernie 2016 has a not-too-shabby cash-on-hand figure, either: $12,161,737.67. That’s more than Bush, although the former Florida governor has deliberately encouraged supporters to direct their donations to his preferred Super Pac, Right to Rise USA.
Once again Clinton is being bested on the number of donors by a competitor. Too soon to tell if Bernie is a better money manager because Clinton’s campaign is more mature and his has barely started.
(Sorry — I do find some of this campaign wonky stuff interesting.)
Update:
91% of all @HillaryClinton donations were $100 or less. Thanks so much people.
UPDATE – FEC filings:Rand Paul. Contributions: $5.3 million. Transfer (from Senate campaign coffers?): 1.6 million. Spent (including unpaid debts) $3.5 million. Net cash on hand $2.4 million.
(will add others as I pull them up)
UPDATE 2 — additional FEC filings:
The Master List of everyone that has filed Click on the candidate’s name to get the detail. (I’m not compulsive enough to look at more than a few and then not much more than the summaries.) A few observations:
Ben Carson: his expenditure pages are a few million dollars short of the $5 million he reported spending to date. Ben Carson Burned a Ton of Cash on Live Music and Private Jets. To date, his campaign operation is a total joke.
Ted Cruz. Practically a blank page for $5.8 million in expenditures.
Hillary Clinton. Her expenditures page is blank. No shortage of $2,700 maxi donors in her contributions detail.
Rand Paul — based on distributions — has a campaign operation in place. Personnel heavily concentrated in DC and VA, but has people in place in fourteen other states.
