The New York Times - USA (2020-10-15)

A14 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020

“There was always going to be a
large amount of money coming
into the nominee,” said Michael
Whitney, a Democratic digital
fund-raising specialist who
worked for Senator Bernie Sand-
ers in the primary. “I’m sure they
never dreamed it would be this
big.”
To chart Mr. Biden’s consequen-
tial financial turnabout, The New
York Times analyzed the flow of
nearly 11 million online contribu-
tions from the first nearly 500
days of his campaign. The analy-
sis looked at $436 million given
through August to Mr. Biden and
his shared committee with the
Democratic National Committee
via ActBlue, the donation-pro-
cessing platform. Checks, mer-
chandise sales and other offline
giving were not included.
The Times analysis shows four
inflection points in Mr. Biden’s
fund-raising metamorphosis, be-
ginning with one unwittingly pro-
vided last fall by Mr. Trump,
whose presidency has been rocket
fuel for Democratic fund-raising.
The other three points — all
linked in different ways to race —
emerge from the 2020 data: Mr.
Biden’s sweeping victories deliv-
ered by Black voters in South Car-
olina and on Super Tuesday, the
protests following the police
killing of George Floyd and, espe-
cially, the selection of Senator Ka-
mala Harris as his running mate.
Ms. Harris, in particular, tur-
bocharged his fund-raising. Mr.
Biden’s previous high for online
donations in a day had been
102,143 contributions. On Aug. 11,
the day he picked Ms. Harris, he
received 252,982. The day after, he
topped 300,000.
Mr. Biden’s committees raised a
record-shattering $364.5 million
in August, including $205 million
online. Then he bested that total in
September, officials said.
Teddy Goff, a top digital strat-
egist for Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and
President Barack Obama in 2012,
called those sums “shocking
amounts.”
“It wasn’t at all clear that a can-
didate who didn’t spend the last
decade building an email fund-
raising list, and who isn’t associ-
ated with the movement wing of
the party, would have such flab-
bergasting success,” he said.
This is how it happened.

Trump’s Ukraine call sparked
impeachment — and Biden’s
fund-raising
The first event that reversed Mr.
Biden’s financial trajectory came
not long after he had scrapped his
ad budget: the September 2019
news that Mr. Trump had pres-
sured the president of Ukraine to
investigate Mr. Biden’s son. That
act eventually spurred the presi-
dent’s impeachment. For many
Democratic primary voters, it
also was a blunt reminder of Mr.
Biden’s polling strength against
Mr. Trump.
In the 40 days before the call
burst into view, on Sept. 20, 2019,
Mr. Biden had raised about
$62,500 online per day, on aver-
age; in the 40 days that followed,
he averaged over $159,000.
It was something of a financial
lifeboat. Over the previous three
months, Mr. Biden had been
spending more than he raised, de-
pleting his cash reserves. The ex-
tra $100,000 a day helped keep the
campaign afloat, officials said.
Kate Bedingfield, a deputy cam-
paign manager for Mr. Biden, said
that Mr. Trump’s seeking help
from Ukraine “made it clear to the
whole world which candidate he
feared facing most.”
“And we capitalized on that in a
way that produced real results,”
she said.
Mr. Biden’s average daily haul
would never again dip below the
six-figure mark.
Still, Mr. Biden mostly plodded
along financially the rest of the
pre-primary season. He averaged
raising $169,059 per day online
last October, $136,518 in Novem-
ber, $128,912 in December and
$168,674 in January.
In other words, there was no
growth.
At the same time, donations to
his rivals ballooned. By late Feb-
ruary, Mr. Biden was teetering po-
litically and had spent only the
sixth most of the Democratic field.

South Carolina resurrected Biden
Then came South Carolina.
With Mr. Sanders threatening
to seize control of the primary,
Black voters gave Mr. Biden a de-
cisive victory — and online money
rained down: more than $5 million
on Feb. 29 and $5 million the next
day. Days later, Mr. Biden swept
through Super Tuesday to amass
a delegate lead he would never re-
linquish.
Mr. Biden would raise $25.3 mil-
lion online over seven days —
more than he had in the previous
four months.
Just as significant, Mr. Biden’s
fund-raising floor was suddenly
and permanently higher — even
as the coronavirus pandemic soon
froze American life. He averaged
about $615,000 per day until Mr.
Sanders dropped out in early
April; the rest of that month, Mr.

Biden’s daily average jumped to

$1.1 million.

Mr. Biden’s email and text lists

were still excruciatingly small for

a presumptive nominee. “A lot of

people were pessimistic about the

Biden campaign’s ability to ramp

up their digital campaign because

they were not as sophisticated in

the primary as other candidates,”

said Tara McGowan, a Democrat-

ic digital strategist.

Mr. Biden’s new campaign man-

ager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon,

rushed to make up ground. She

cast aside a proposal to outsource

much of the digital operations to a

firm, Hawkfish, created by the bil-

lionaire Michael R. Bloomberg,

and instead went on a hiring and

spending spree. Almost 40 per-

cent of Mr. Biden’s April outlays —

$4.7 million of $12 million — went

into ads seeking new supporters

online, according to federal

records and campaigns officials.

The investments were ap-

proved even as the economy cra-

tered, other campaign depart-

ments clamored to expand and

the payoff seemed uncertain.

“People were nervous and

scared,” said Rob Flaherty, the

campaign’s digital director. “Poli-

tics was a secondary thing.”

Donations stagnated at first de-

spite the spending, and even re-

gressed. In the first weeks of May,

Mr. Biden’s daily online haul had

dipped below $775,000, despite

nearly a third of the campaign’s to-

tal budget going into donor

prospecting.

Floyd’s killing led to an outpouring

In the first weeks of May, the Bi-

den campaign was regularly at

risk of missing internal digital

fund-raising goals, according to

an official familiar with the matter,

and often needed external boosts

to help hit its metrics.

Then came the video of Mr.

Floyd’s death that set off nation-

wide protests against police bru-

tality and racial injustice.

Millions of dollars sponta-

neously flooded into racial justice

groups and Black-led organiza-

tions — and also Mr. Biden’s cof-

fers. On May 27, Mr. Biden raised

$1.3 million, starting his first-ever

two-week stretch of days above $

million.

On June 2, Mr. Biden delivered

his first speech outside his home

since the pandemic froze cam-

paign activities, speaking in Phila-

delphia on race relations the day

after the Trump administration

had used smoke, flash grenades

and chemical spray to clear peace-

ful protesters outside the White

House for a photo op. More than

$3.2 million poured in — Mr. Bi-

den’s biggest day since the week

of Super Tuesday.

Hate-giving is a well-known

phenomenon for Democratic do-

nors in the Trump era, and Mr. Bi-

den becoming the vessel to take

down Mr. Trump has been a finan-

cial boon.

“Joe Biden showed up and he

was the counter-president in that

moment,” said Caitlin Mitchell, a

former top D.N.C. official who

joined the Biden campaign as a

senior digital strategist in May.

The Biden campaign began fu-

riously spending to capture the

newfound energy, directing as

much money into Facebook ads in

the first days of June as it had in

its first 10 months.

From March 1 to July 1, the cam-

paign’s email list quintupled. The

Floyd-inspired protests were a

clear turning point, with 2.6 mil-

lion added in June alone. Mr. Bi-

den had averaged raising

$795,000 per day in the preceding

75 days; that figured doubled to

$1.65 million over the following 75

days.

Harris’s impact was astronomical

Mr. Biden’s choice for his running

mate was a closely guarded secret

by the campaign’s inner sanctum

leading up to Ms. Harris’s August

unveiling. A special Slack channel

was set up, with a slowly expand-

ing list of people invited on a need-

to-know basis, hour by hour. The

goal was to break the news via

text message.

But a minute before the text

went out, the Biden-Harris cam-

paign website accidentally went

live, according to campaign offi-

cials, although the mix-up went

undetected.

The rush of money that followed

was staggering.

The selection of Ms. Harris

proved so popular, so quickly, that

the campaign opened a new fulfill-

ment center just for yard signs.

More than $48 million flooded into

the campaign in those heady first

48 hours, roughly 80 percent from

online; by the end of the month, all

14 of Mr. Biden’s biggest days for

online fund-raising had come af-

ter forming the Biden-Harris

ticket.

“This level is not inevitable,”

said Mr. Whitney, the former

Sanders strategist, who credited

an investment in staff and digital

infrastructure. “They have done

very well to reach the maximum.”

A Biden campaign that once

had only five aides dedicated to

online fund-raising now counts 45,

including those integrated with

the D.N.C.

In one notable move, the Biden

campaign sent news of Ms. Har-

ris’s selection to the full dormant

list of the D.N.C., something cam-

paigns are generally averse to do-

ing out of fear of tripping spam fil-

ters, and again after her conven-

tion speech. Those two emails,

campaign officials said, reactivat-

ed 875,000 supporters.

The Biden campaign raised an

average of $8.1 million a day on-

line in the last three weeks of Au-

gust, following Ms. Harris’s selec-

tion and during the two national

conventions. That is $2.5 million

more than its previous biggest

day.

“In digital, our job is to make

windmills,” said Mr. Flaherty, the

digital director. “The candidate

has to make the wind.”

Joseph R. Biden Jr. got a fund-raising jolt on Feb. 29 when he won the South Carolina primary,

top, taking in more than $5 million online that day and $5 million the next. And in August, after he

made Kamala Harris, above, his running mate, more than $48 million flooded in over 48 hours.

ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

MADDIE MCGARVEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Announced candidacy

$4.6 MILLION

Won South

Carolina primary

$5 MILLION

Announced Kamala Harris

as running mate

$12.7 MILLION

Last night of the D.N.C.

$13.6 MILLION

George Floyd killed

in police custody

Daily donations to the Biden campaign

April ’19 May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. ’20 Feb. March April May June July Aug.

Sources: Federal Election Commission, ActBlue ELLA KOEZE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$16 million

raised per day

April

$

$

$

$

$5 million

Median daily donations to the Biden campaign, by month

July Oct. Jan. April July

2019 2020

Announced

candidacy

Won South

Carolina primary

Announced Kamala Harris

as running mate

Last night of the D.N.C.

George Floyd killed

in police custody

April ’19 July Oct. Jan. ’20 April July

$

$

$

$

$

$

$400 million

total raised

Total donations to the Biden campaign

How Biden Rose to Become Cash King of the 2020 Race

From Page A

This week, President Trump

exaggerated a position taken by

the World Health Organization,

saying that the agency had vindi-

cated his derision of lockdowns

during the coronavirus pandemic.

“The World Health Organiza-

tion just admitted that I was right,”

the president tweeted. “Lock-

downs are killing countries all

over the world. The cure cannot be

worse than the problem itself.”

Mr. Trump’s message was rap-

idly shared by thousands online,

including the commentator Lou

Dobbs and Representative Andy

Biggs, Republican of Arizona, who

echoed the president’s rallying cry

to “open up” and described the

closings as “pseudoscientific” and

“tyrannical.”

Since the early days of the

pandemic, the president has

dismissed lockdowns as unneces-

sary and harmful, even while the

virus continued to blaze across

the nation.

Mr. Trump did not say which

W.H.O. statement he was refer-

ring to. But one of the few pub-

lished recent comments from a

W.H.O. official about lockdowns

came from David Nabarro, one of

several envoys to the organiza-

tion on Covid-19.

“We in the World Health Orga-

nization do not advocate lock-

downs as the primary means of

control of this virus,” Dr. Nabarro

said this month to the British

magazine The Spectator. “The

only time we believe a lockdown

is justified is to buy you time to

reorganize, regroup, rebalance

your resources, protect your

health workers who are ex-

hausted. But by and large, we’d

rather not do it.”

“We really do appeal to all

world leaders, stop using lock-

down as your primary method of

control,” Dr. Nabarro said.

Dr. Nabarro described several

potential tolls of widespread

lockdowns, which have set off

economic declines and higher

unemployment rates, and have

widened disparities in many

parts of the world, including the

United States.

Dr. Nabarro has also noted that

lockdowns may be necessary

under some circumstances. In

addition, he has advocated for a

multifaceted approach to curbing

the spread of the coronavirus — a

strategy he recently outlined in a

written reflection that highlighted

the importance of physical dis-

tancing, mask-wearing, accessi-

ble testing and contact tracing,

among other measures, to pin-

point and suppress outbreaks.

In a statement, Hedinn Hall-

dorsson, a spokesman for the

W.H.O., reaffirmed that the pan-

demic needed to be addressed

with such a “package” of protec-

tive tactics.

“W.H.O. has never advocated

for national lockdowns as a pri-

mary means for controlling the

virus,” he said. “Dr. Nabarro was

repeating our advice to govern-

ments to ‘do it all.’ ”

Some countries, like New Zea-

land, used lockdowns to great

success to tame their outbreaks.

Others, like South Korea, were

able to circumvent them by push-

ing hard on testing. All success

stories, however, have one thing in

common: swift action to acknowl-

edge and beat back the virus.

Lockdowns are extreme, and

inevitably come with costs, said

Syra Madad, a public health

expert and epidemiologist based

in New York. But they can afford

communities much-needed time

to ready other methods of con-

tainment.

“Had the U.S. been better

prepared and responded faster,”

Dr. Madad said, perhaps “lock-

downs could have been avoided.”

DISTORTIONS

Trump Inflates

W.H.O.’s Stance

On Lockdowns

By KATHERINE J. WU

Times reporters chronicle and

debunk false and misleading infor-

mation that is going viral online.

The World Health Organization just

admitted that I was right. Lockdowns

are killing countries all over the world.

The cure cannot be worse than the

problem itself. Open up your states,

Democrat governors. Open up New

York. A long battle, but they finally did

the right thing!

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

WATCH: Dr David Nabarro, the WHO’s

Special Envoy on Covid-19, tells Andrew

Neil: ‘We really do appeal to all world

leaders: stop using lockdown as your

primary control method’.

The Spectator

@spectator

Election