Buttigieg’s $7M haul

‘He’s disrupting the entire 2020 race’: Buttigieg’s $7M haul puts Dems on notice

The Democratic mayor showed off his staying power in the presidential race with a big fundraising announcement.

By ELENA SCHNEIDER and DANIEL STRAUSS

Pete Buttigieg’s Monday fundraising announcement carried an unmistakable message to his 2020 rivals: He’s here to stay.

The South Bend (Ind.) mayor has jolted the 2020 presidential campaign with growing media attention and rising public polling, and he did it again Monday by saying he raised over $7 million during his first months on the trail, seeding his campaign with the resources to take advantage of the early burst of national attention.

Buttigieg’s fundraising haul is the clearest sign yet that he’s emerging as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination in an unorthodox way. The 37-year-old, openly gay candidate is raising millions online and capturing the attention of national Democrats in a string of viral moments in recent weeks, while also leaning on a network of fellow mayors to build roots on the ground.

“He’s disrupting the entire 2020 race,” said Jon Soltz, president of VoteVets, a progressive group that hasn’t endorsed a 2020 candidate. Soltz added: “The more and more people hear from him, the more they think he’s the fresh face that they’ve been waiting for.”

Buttigieg is the first presidential candidate to offer a glimpse at his fundraising totals from the first quarter of 2019 — garnering significant cable news coverage all day Monday. Other candidates have already touted 24-hour totals after they launched their campaigns. Beto O’Rourke led the field with more than $6.1 million raised in a single day, followed closely by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who brought in just under $6 million.

Late Monday evening, California Sen. Kamala Harris reported raising more than $12 million in the first quarter, building on her strong early start on fundraising. She took in $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her candidacy.

Sanders and O’Rourke’s total first-quarter numbers will also likely dwarf Buttigieg’s. But the mayor is likely to surpass several senators and governors also running for the Democratic presidential nomination, which “is quite extraordinary for a mayor,” said Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic consultant who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid.

“He’s carved his way into this race, and I’m not sure many people thought he could do that,” said Longabaugh, whose media firm parted ways with Sanders ahead of his 2020 campaign.

Unlike some of his 2020 primary opponents, Buttigieg didn’t start with a ready-made digital fundraising program to tap into. In an email to supporters, Buttigieg said he “started with just about 20,000 people on our email list, and not many people even knew who I was.” In contrast, Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand sunk millions into their programs during their Senate bids, while O’Rourke built an enormous list of supporters during his Texas Senate bid last cycle.

Buttigieg dropped only $15,000 on Facebook ads in the past three months, near the bottom of the 2020 field. Candidates often spend significant money on the platform to collect emails and small-dollar donations from supporters.

“Beto got ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ for his fundraising debut, but he was tapping into a well-established and freshly curated donor list,” said Rob Stutzman, a California-based Republican consultant. “Buttigieg’s first-quarter numbers are the stuff of a very real organic phenomenon that establishes him as a surging candidate who has achieved real liftoff.”

It’s also a network that Buttigieg can return to, quarter after quarter, so the small-dollar component of Buttigieg’s early fundraising “is worth so much more than that over the next year,” said Soltz, who also warned that Buttigieg’s newfound status will also likely “start drawing attacks from other candidates.”

For now, it’s cash he can quickly invest into a much-needed campaign infrastructure in the early states — where the mayor has none to speak of so far. The Buttigieg campaign plans to double its size from 20 staffers to 40 within the next few weeks, and it is seeking in-state staffers in Iowa and New Hampshire, where local operatives warn that some of the top talent has already been snapped up by Buttigieg’s rivals.

But for Buttigieg, this fundraising haul “means he’s viable, and at the very least, he’s going to be around for a while,” said Julianna Smoot, a Democratic strategist who served as the national finance director on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“That’s the kind of money that means you can actually start building a strategy for the early states,” Smoot added.

Buttigieg’s viability is also showing up in the polls, where he’s jumped to 4 percent nationally, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released last week. An Iowa-based poll released by another progressive group, Focus On Rural America, also showed Buttigieg moving from 0 to 6 percent support among Democrats in the state.

Buttigieg has also leaned on his fellow mayors’ connections. He’s talked with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who considered a 2020 bid of his own, and West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, both of whom connected Buttigieg with deep-pocketed Democrats in California, according to multiple people with knowledge of these interactions.

“I think it’s every day, if not twice a day, that someone calls me who wants to donate to Pete,” said Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, Ohio, who has also sent contributors and potential staffers to Buttigieg’s team.

Former Ambassador David Jacobson, a Democratic donor who donated to the mayor during his failed bid for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017, said the fundraising haul will help bring more donors to Buttigieg.

“What it does is it [provides] evidence — not just to me and my fundraising friends but to people in general — that, you know what? This guy's got something and I need to look more closely at it,” Jacobson said. “Like everything else, success breeds success. I do think that his number that he released today is going to encourage people to look his way.”

Buttigieg is also surging at a time when another Democrat with deep roots in the industrial Midwest is stumbling. Former Vice President Joe Biden came under fire in recent days after two women – former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores and a former campaign volunteer — accused Biden of unwanted touching. Biden released a statement on Sunday, pledging to listen to suggestions that he’d acted inappropriately and stressing that he never intended to cause discomfort.

“The thing about Mayor Pete is he doesn’t have baggage,” said Democratic activist Molly Jong-Fast, who’s planning to host a fundraiser for Buttigieg.