A6 eZ re the washington post.saturday, february 22 , 2020
bers show they serve as a wel-
come respite.
On Thursday, Warren made a
major reversal and justified ac-
cepting the help of Persist PAC, a
super PAC that formed this week
to help her in Nevada and South
Carolina. Kitchen Ta ble Conver-
sations PAC also recently formed
to help Klobuchar in those states.
Now, most non-billionaireDemocratic candidates are being
supported by a super PAC. Super
PACs are independent groups
that can raise and spend unlimit-
ed amounts of money to influ-
ence elections and must disclose
their donors. But because of
technical reasons, we will not
know who is financing the super
PACs supporting Warren and
Klobuchar until March 20 — wellSource: Federal Election Commission THE WASHINGTON POSTWhat the Democratic candidates spent in January
Data through Jan. 31, 2020, the most recent available$220.6 million$52.9M$26.1M$22.3M$14M$10.6M$7.6M$1.8MSandersSteyerButtigiegKlobucharGabbardBloombergBidenWarren$BY MICHELLE YE HEE LEE
AND ANU NARAYANSWAMYJanuary was a crucial period
for the Democratic presidential
candidates, who spent heavily to
prepare for the first two primary
contests while they struggled to
keep up fundraising momentum.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s
giant reelection war chest keeps
expanding. A nd self-funding can-
didate Mike Bloomberg plowed
an eye-popping $2 20 million of
his own money into his cam-
paign.
The January spending figures
are officially in, and here are the
most interesting takeaways we
found.
- Warren really needed her
newfound momentum.
Sanders was way ahead of
everyone.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s cam-
paign says her fiery debate per-
formance Wednesday has turned
February into her best fundrais-
ing month yet.
But January figures show the
senator from Massachusetts was
in deep trouble before her sud-
den apparent reversal — so much
so that her campaign took out a
$3 million line of credit and
tapped into $400,000 of it as a
loan as contingency cash before
the Iowa caucuses. She spent
more t han double ($22.3 million)
the amount she raised ($10.8 m il-
lion) in January. There were
signs she was facing trouble: She
canceled ads in Nevada and
South Carolina this month.
Meanwhile, Sanders contin-
ued to dominate the Democratic
money race. He kept up his
fundraising momentum, raising
$25 million in a month, with
more than half coming from
donors giving less than $200.
Going into the next important
phase of the primary race, he had
the most money — $16.8 million
— among candidates who are not
self-funding their campaigns.- Buttigieg blew through his
cash. Klobuchar’s finances
improved a lot.
Pete Buttigieg, the former
mayor of South Bend, Ind., was
among the top fundraisers
throughout most of 2019. But in
January, he raised just $6 mil-
lion, among the lower hauls.
Buttigieg blew through his
cash, spending more than twice
what he raised, betting on his
chances in Iowa and New Hamp-
shire. He e nded up with $6.6 mil-
lion on hand by Jan. 31 and is
now off to a dizzying schedule of
fundraisers to restock his ac-
count.
The January haul of Sen. Amy
Klobuchar of Minnesota, who
was not a particularly big fund-
raiser in 2019, shot up to
$5.5 million. Filings show she
was rising f inancially even before
she hit the money groove that
followed her standout perfor-
mance during the Feb. 8 debate
in New Hampshire. Klobuchar
had $2. 9 million on hand by
Jan. 31.
Per early figures from the cam-
paigns, Klobuchar appears to be
keeping pace with Buttigieg’s
fundraising so far in February.
She reported raising $12 million
in online donations alone in the
week after the Feb. 8 debate.
Buttigieg said he raised $11 mil-
lion overall so far in February. - Super PACs are coming to
the rescue.
After being batted around as a
boogeyman in the Democratic
primaries, super PACs are now
fully in play. And January num-
after Super Tuesday.
The super PAC supporting Joe
Biden, Unite the Country PAC,
raised $4. 2 million and spent
$3.9 million in January, with a
heavy focus on Iowa. Its biggest
donors included Richard Blum,
investor and husband of Sen.
Dianne Feinstein ($1 million);
Masimo chief executive Joe Kiani
($750,000); LinkedIn co-founder
Reid Hoffman ($500,000); and
angel investor Ron Conway
($250,000).
While Biden’s January haul
($8.9 million) was not brag-wor-
thy, his biggest advantage was
that he had some $7 million cash
on hand entering February —
significantly more than his oppo-
nents, except for Sanders and the
two billionaires.- Bloomberg spent more
than $400 million of his own
money in 10 weeks.
Mike Bloomberg, the multi -
billionaire who is self-funding
his presidential bid, spent more
than $409 million since entering
the race late November, making
him the biggest s elf-funding poli-
tician in U.S. history.
In January alone, Bloomberg
spent $220.6 million, ramping
up his spending on ads and staff.
About 78 percent ($172 million)
of his January expenses went
into ads. He spent $8 million on
payroll for the about 1,0 00 peo-
ple he employed at the time. His
campaign staff is now at 2,400,
officials said.
Among his biggest expenses
last month was $13.7 million to
Hawkfish, an ad tech start-up
that he founded and that is now
his campaign’s primary digital
and tech service provider.
The amount of money
Bloomberg has spent on televi-
sion and radio ads alone so far —
more than $338.7 million — has
surpassed the $338.3 million re-
cord set by President Barack
Obama’s 2012 reelection cam-
paign on such ads, according to
the ad-tracking firm Advertising
Analytics. In comparison, the six
candidates still in the race who
are not self-funding their cam-
paigns together spent $370 mil-
lion in all of 2019.- Trump entered February
with a huge war chest of
$200 million.
Trump continues to raise and
spend record amounts for his
reelection campaign. The Trump
campaign, the Republican Na-
tional Committee and their two
affiliated fundraising commit-
tees raised $60.5 million in Janu-
ary and entered February with
$200 million in cash, according
to the federal filings and cam-
paign officials.
Trump has drawn on national
party coffers to help pay for the
legal tabs of his private attorneys
in the impeachment trial. In
January, the RNC made two pay-
ments of $60, 000 each to two
firms, Raskin & Raskin and Con-
stitutional Litigation and Advo-
cacy Group, whose lawyers have
represented him during the im-
peachment hearings.
While the Democratic primary
contests are just beginning,
Trump and the RNC now have an
added fundraising edge: the abil-
ity to raise their biggest checks to
date from a single donor to the
party. Trump can now raise
$580,600 from one person —
more than 100 times the amount
a single donor can give to a
Democratic presidential candi-
date right now. Last w eek, Trump
headlined his highest-ticket re-
election fundraiser to date.
The Democratic National
Committee and its affiliated
fundraising c ommittee, the Dem-
ocratic Grassroots Victory Fund,
raised $10.9 million in January,
filings show.
[email protected]
anu.narayanswamy@
washpost.com
How 2020 candidates spent their money in January
Source: Federal Election CommissionNote: Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer are self-funding their campaigns and are
not directly comparable
THE WASHINGTON POST$7.1M$6.6M$2.9M$2.3M$2M$SandersButtigiegWarrenGabbardBidenKlobuchar$16.8 millionWhat the Democratic candidates had left in their
Everyone blew through a campaign coffers heading into Februarylot of cash, but only some
were able to make gains
struggled for support from the
white, college-educated voters
backing Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-
Minn.) and former South Bend,
Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Financially, her campaign
came closer to the brink than was
publicly known before the Iowa
caucuses on Feb. 3. New financial
reports show the campaign took
out a $3 million line of credit and
drew out $400,000 that it ended
up not using. She ended last
month with just $2.3 million on
hand but has so far raised
$17 million in February, includ-
ing a huge bump after her debate
here.
“The central question for War-
ren is does a strong performance
by her bring some of the liberals
who are on the fence between her
and Sanders back to her?” said
Neera Ta nden, the president of
the Center for American Prog-
ress, a liberal think tank, who has
not backed any of the presiden-
tial candidates. “If you’re a very
liberal person and you’re asking,
‘Who can best take on Trump?’
she reassured you on that,” Tand-
en said.
Warren and her allies believe
the muddled results so far mean
there’s still time for her to win.
Just 4 percent of the delegates
needed to clinch the nomination
will have been awarded after
South Carolina votes on Feb. 29.
But the challenge rises astronom-
ically days later, on March 3,when more than a third of the
delegates will be distributed after
voting in more than a dozen
states.
Warren’s schedule provides a
clear sign that she plans to fight
hard in the hope of running up
the score in liberal pockets of the
country on Super Tuesday.
She plans to leave Nevada on
Saturday — likely before caucus
results are announced — to head-
line a rally in Seattle and then
skips to Denver on Sunday, hit-
ting the large, expensive media
markets in two states that vote in
March. After a stop in South
Carolina, she plans to travel to
California and other Super Tues-
day states.
Warren’s d emeanor has bright-
ened markedly since Wednes-
day’s debate here, where she was
sharply critical of b illionaire can-
didate and former New York may-
or Mike Bloomberg and also de-
livered lancing blows on other
rivals.
“So after the debate last night,
are we ready to make a change?
How about some big structural
change?” Warren exhorted a
group of cheering volunteers
packed into one of her campaign
offices in a Las Vegas strip mall.
“Last night was a lot of fun,”
she added, and then rehashed her
critique of Bloomberg’s stop-and-
frisk policing policy.
L ater, during a CNN town hall
Thursday night, s he pressed thecase further, reading from a legal
document she had prepared for
Bloomberg that would release
women from nondisclosure
agreements reached after claims
of harassment involving him or
his company. (Bloomberg agreed
Friday to discard three agree-
ments if the women involved
want to be freed from them. He
said those were the only ones that
pertained to his own behavior.)
“I used to teach contract law,”
said Warren, a rare reference to
her time as a law professor. “I
wrote up a release and covenant
not to sue, and all that Mayor
Bloomberg has to do is download
it — I’ll text it — sign it, and then
the women, or men, will be free to
speak and tell their own stories.”
She took out a piece of paper
and read aloud.
It was the kind of attention-
seeking stunt that she has avoid-
ed for the past year, instead
dutifully focusing on policy and
her organization’s regular releas-
es of dense, footnoted position
papers that made it feel more like
a think tank than presidential
campaign.
“She’s engaging in the political
stakes for what they are and not
what she wants them to be,” s aid
Adam Jentelson, a Warren ally.
“She’s playing to win now. In a
good way.”
But her reversal on accepting
help from super PACs opened her
up to accusations that she hadBY ANNIE LINSKEYLAS VEGAS — Everybody loses
some of their inhibitions in Las
Vegas. Even Elizabeth Warren.
This is where the Democratic
senator from Massachusetts
shrugged off her reluctance to
criticize rivals and eviscerated
them during a debate, landing
precision blows one after the
other. This is where she accepted
the help of a super PAC, reversing
a central tenet of her presidential
campaign about the corrupting
power of money. And this is
where it started to look like she
was having fun for the first time
in months, just ahead of Satur-
day’s Nevada caucuses.
After moping two weeks ago
through New Hampshire, where
she stressed to audiences that she
hasn’t spent her career pining for
the White House, she was sud-
denly making changes that could
expand the possibility that she
gets there.
Allies say Warren’s demeanor
changed after disappointing re-
sults rolled in from gray and
snow-covered New Hampshire.
Already upset with herself for a
lackluster New Hampshire de-
bate and down about her disap-
pointing third-place finish in
Iowa, she made a case to her staff
that this was the time to fight.
“There’s going to c ome a time
when it is clear what’s going to
happen in this contest, but that
time is not now,” s he said, accord-
ing to a person familiar with the
call who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because the person
was not authorized to discuss it.
“We are nowhere near that mo-
ment. We are not close. We’re not
even within shouting distance.
“These are the moments we
find out who we are.”
Her new approach might be
too late. Nearly as many Nevada
caucus-goers participated in ear-
ly voting before her breakout
debate as the total turnout four
years ago, meaning a massive
chunk of the electorate here
weighed in before seeing Warren
sparkle onstage. Hundreds of
thousands already have cast their
ballots in California, the top dele-
gate prize on March 3.
More importantly, the dynam-
ics of the race so far continue to
drastically narrow her path: Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has largely
consolidated support from the
left. Warren hasn’t significantly
expanded her support among
moderates, failing to benefit from
former vice president Joe Biden’s
slide in the polls. She also has
bent her principles to boost her
candidacy.
On Thursday night, at t he town
hall, she made a tortured case
that her embrace of a super PAC
wasn’t inconsistent with her
campaign beliefs.
“So from the first day I got in
this campaign, I said to anybody
who runs for president, ‘Let’s do
this without super PACs. Let’s all
agree. Before they’ve gotten into
it, before people have invested
money in this, let’s all just agree
we will all say no super PACs,’”
she said on CNN. “Nobody took
me up on it.... Not a single other
candidate would agree with me.
So I haven’t changed my posi-
tion.”
She did not explain how her
new stance squares with a section
of her campaign website, which
in capital letters says she “RE-
JECTS SUPER PACs.”
The Persist super PAC benefit-
ing Warren has spent $1 million
in South Carolina on TV ads,
according to its spokesman. It
also put $1 million into ads run-
ning in Nevada. The group is
planning a Super Tuesday strate-
gy.
The super PAC will use tools
that Warren has eschewed, in-
cluding polling, to determine
which TV commercials move the
most voters.
In her presidential campaign,
Warren has boasted of shedding
consultants and a pollster sheused in her Senate races. The
super PAC is reaching out to some
of those staffers, potentially re-
constituting some of the team
that helped her win previous
contests.
Warren’s debate move marked
the second time in her campaign
that she has taken bold steps with
her back against the wall. When
Warren first entered the race, she
slumped amid controversy over
having claimed Native American
ancestry. Her fundraising was
weak and polling had her in
single digits.
She responded by throwing
aside caution on some issues that
felt tricky at the time, including
becoming the first presidential
candidate to call for the impeach-
ment of President Trump, refus-
ing as a protest to participate in a
Fox News town hall and, perhaps
most importantly, dismantling
her high-dollar fundraising oper-
ation. The moves set her apart in
a crowded field.
Now Warren is also altering
her message, moving away from
casting herself as a unity candi-
date and returning to the image
of a fighter.
“ Her mistake in New Hamp-
shire was to campaign as the
unifier. She will be the unifier in
the end; in the meantime, she
needs to be a fighter in order to
continue to build her own base,”
said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin
(D-Md.), who has endorsed War-
ren. “I think she can become a
unifier at the convention, but she
has to be a fighter during the
campaign. And she was a prize-
fighter” at the debate, he said.
Raskin said her debate perfor-
mance buoyed the spirits of her
endorsers.
“People were so excited,” he
said. “Everybody was writing
about how she had transformed
the campaign, she had revitalized
everybody’s spirits and she had
really punched through to the top
tier of the race.”
Warren allies timed the real
change in her to the results in
New Hampshire, which showed
she would not win a single dele-
gate from her next-door state.
“She gets this kind of underdog
determination,” said one Warren
ally, who saw her that night but
would speak only on the condi-
tion of anonymity to discuss a
private moment. Her demeanor,
the person said, became: “I’m not
going to go d own without a fight.”
In her conference call with
staff members that night, she
offered an upbeat assessment.
“These are the moments when
we remember that knockdowns
make us stronger, [that] chal-
lenges build muscle,” Warren told
them on the phone call. “Hear
this straight from me to you, I
believe in you and I believe in
what we can do together.”
[email protected]With little now to lose, W arren pulls off gloves — and flips on super PAC cash
As campaign teeters, she
sharpens attacks, takes
help where she can get itMelina Mara/the Washington Post
Sen. Elizabeth Warren walks the picket line Wednesday with Culinary Union members at the Palms Resort Casino in Las Vegas. With the
vast majority of Democratic delegates yet to be won, she is looking beyond Saturday’s Nevada caucuses to contests farther down the road.