CNN
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President Joe Biden’s political operation has expanded its financial advantage over former President Donald Trump’s campaign as the two men hurtle toward an expected general election confrontation, new filings show.
Biden’s campaign entered February with nearly $56 million cash reserves in his main campaign committee compared to a little more than $30 million in the coffers of Trump’s equivalent account.
And the president, who spent part of Tuesday on a fundraising swing in California, continues to rake in contributions as Trump grapples with ever-growing legal problems that are siphoning away donors’ money and still contends with the refusal of his remaining rival, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, to end her long-shot bid for the GOP nomination.
Haley, who is vowing to remain in the race to Super Tuesday, started February with just shy of $13 million in cash reserves after spending more than she raised in January, new filings show.
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Here are key takeaways from Tuesday’s campaign filings:
Incumbent presidents typically hold a fundraising advantage, and Biden’s political operation ended January in a strong financial position. It announced this week that it started February with $130 million cash on hand across all its aligned committees.
(Tuesday’s filings cover only a portion of each presidential candidate’s political operation. The campaigns and national parties report fundraising totals on a monthly basis, but filings from joint fundraising committees – detailing their fundraising cash reserves – are not due until later this year.)
The total Biden touts raising across his fundraising committees still trails what Trump and the Republican National Committee had built up by this point in 2020 – when he and his aligned committees reported more than $200 million in cash reserves.
But Biden, as the sitting president in 2024, has the ability to raise money jointly with national party and stockpile cash now for the expensive general election fight ahead. His West Coast fundraising tour was expected to bring in as much as $10 million.
The Democratic National Committee outraised its GOP counterpart in January, bringing in $17.4 million and ended the month with $24 million in available cash. That far surpasses
the $8.7 million in available cash for the RNC, which marked a slight uptick from the $8 million it reported having in reserves at the end of last year, but still represents its lowest total in about a decade.
The RNC brought in a total of about $11.6 million in January.
The RNC’s low cash reserves have been a major source of concern for the party and contributed to the exit of outgoing chair Ronna McDaniel, who is planning on stepping down from her role later this month – part of sweeping changes coming to the RNC with Trump poised to reshape the party infrastructure.
At $8.7 million, the RNC’s cash reserves remain the lowest its reported since early 2015, and down significantly from a peak of more than $90 million as recently as 2021.
Although Trump is the GOP frontrunner, he still has yet to formally clinch the nomination and fuse his campaign apparatus with that of the RNC – a move that is…
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