By Fredreka Schouten, CNN
(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign increased its already blistering fundraising pace last month, bringing in $361 million in August – easily swamping the $130 million raised by her Republican rival last month and giving the Democrat a whopping $404 million in cash reserves for the final, two-month sprint to Election Day, her campaign aides announced Friday.
The cash stockpiled across Harris’ affiliated committees tops the $295 million that Trump’s political operation said it had available in its bank accounts and underscores how much Harris’ historic and late-breaking candidacy has energized donors and transformed the 2024 race.
If this rate continues, Harris is poised to collect more than $1 billion in the condensed campaign window between becoming the party’s de facto nominee in late July and Election Day. She’s already raised more than $615 million since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid on July 21, her campaign noted Friday.
“In just a short time, Vice President Harris’ candidacy has galvanized a history-making, broad, and diverse coalition – with the type of enthusiasm, energy, and grit that wins close elections,” Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
Last month’s haul topped the $310 million that Harris and Democrats raised in July and came amid the fanfare of her announcing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and formally accepting her party’s nomination at last month’s celebrity-studded Chicago convention, which also included appearances from Biden and two of his White House predecessors.
Harris’ campaign also touted August as the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history, saying it drew record support from first-time contributors. Nearly 3 million donors gave to the Harris political operation in August, with 1.3 million of them making their first donation of the 2024 election cycle, according to her aides.
The third strongest grassroots fundraising day of the campaign came on August 6 – the day Harris announced Walz’s selection, campaign officials said.
The August haul does not best the monthly fundraising record of $383 million set by the Biden-Harris political operation in September 2020 at the height of that presidential campaign.
The August totals announced by Trump’s team show his fundraising pace has slowed – with his election effort bringing in slightly less last month than the $138.7 million it had collected in July. An earlier CNN analysis of donations that exceeded $200 this cycle found that some of Trump’s biggest fundraising days came in May around his felony conviction in New York, exceeding even the amounts the campaign reported collecting in July during his party’s nominating convention.
Harris campaign officials said they are plowing their money into reaching voters, citing a “weekend of action” in the coming days that will feature 2,000 events and a $370 million digital and TV ad campaign running through the election. The campaign said it also has established more than 312 offices with the Democratic Party and employs more than 2,000 staffers with the party across battleground states but warned of a close, hard-fought contest in the home stretch.
The presidential campaigns will release a full accounting of their August fundraising and spending later this month in filings with federal election regulators.
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