Beto O’Rourke Reports $6 Million in First Day Fundraising

On Friday, I wrote this:

Now that Beto O’Rouke is in the race, the time for speculating is done, the coulda, shoulda, willas now have an embodiment and trajectory. There will soon be discernible data points to judge on, and a pass/fail grade at the end of this most public of tests.

Now we have the first of those data points, and it is good news for Team Beto.

The Washington Post:

O’Rourke’s campaign said he raised $6,136,763 from donations that came from all 50 states, D.C., and every U.S. territory.

“In just 24 hours, Americans across this country came together to prove that it is possible to run a true grassroots campaign for president — a campaign by all of us for all of us that answers not to the PACs, corporations, and special interests but to the people,” O’Rourke said in a statement.

In his first day as a candidate, Sanders (I-Vt.) reported raising $5.925 million from 223,000 donors, which brought his average contribution to $27.

O’Rourke’s campaign would not release the total number of donors or the amount raised any subsequent days.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) reported raising $1.5 million from 38,000 donors in the 24 hours after she announced her campaign. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) did not announce how much she raised, but on her first day, she pulled in at least $300,000 from 8,000 donors, according to fundraising figures reported by ActBlue, an online fundraising organization used by Warren and other Democrats.

Several Democratic campaigns — those of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Gov. Jay Inslee (Wash.) and former governor John Hickenlooper (Colo.) — said they raised about $1 million over 48 hours.

There is no way to confirm the figures the campaigns are releasing until they file reports with the Federal Election Commission in several more weeks.

That last line is key, as the details of an FEC filing can tell all sorts of stories. It is also fair to point out that money alone does not a campaign make, nor does name recognition. It has been lost to the memory hole behind the whirlwind of 3 years of Donald Trump, but Jeb Bush was at one point a frontrunning presidential candidate with $130M spent and nothing but a popular “please clap” meme to show for it.

But for now Beto O’Rourke passed his first candidate hurdle, and deftly held the info for a Monday morning news cycle, maximizing it’s news value and also trapping the odd pundit into a “what is he hiding” trap. How far he goes remains to be see, but he will clearly be in the running for some time to come.