Democrats Confront the Price of Campaign-Finance Purity
The 2020 race for the White House will undoubtedly be a battle both of ideology and personality. But it is also shaping up as a clash of two opposing forces: the ever-expanding, $1 billion industry that is a modern presidential campaign, and the Democratic Party’s move away from the top-down approach to fundraising that has fueled American politics for decades.
So far, the progressive push toward campaign-finance purity is winning, and that’s worrying Democrats who believe the party literally can’t afford to leave money on the table if it wants to defeat President Donald Trump next year.
The three most prolific fundraisers in the sprawling Democratic presidential primary field—Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris and former Representative Beto O’Rourke—hauled in just under $40 million total in the first quarter of 2019. That was enough to easily surpass the $30 million that the Trump campaign added to its coffers. But it represented a steep drop-off from.
