Seattle PI report:
Democratic candidates' money hunt: Bernie Sanders out front
By Joel Connelly, Thurs. April 4, 2019
[...] Sanders took in $18.2 million for the quarter, almost all of it raised online with some 525,000 people giving during the quarter. In the 2016 campaign, his ability to draw on-line donors was a wellspring of cash that made the competition salivate.
Not all contenders have disclosed figures, just those with something to show. Candidates have until April 15 to submit reports to the Federal Election Commission.
[...] In second place, so far, is Sen. Kamala Harris of California at $12 million from 218,000 donations, listing an average donation at $28.
Harris has built an impressive online fundraising operation. She is, however, also courting the "Whales," wealthy donors and bundlers of contributions of a sort that fueled Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. The nominee campaigned in the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard, but didn't make it to Wisconsin.
Ex-Rep. Beto O'Rourke is doing better with the folks than the pundits, having taken in $9.4 million in the first 18 days of his campaign.
Harris has ex-Clintonian staffers, and seems positioned with the corporate money sources too; but has not, as far as online reporting could be found, given Goldman Sachs quarter-million dollar speeches; (cash into the wallet and not into any one-step-removed campaign treasury). No reporting on how Harris handles her email. Likely a learner.
Beto at nine million dollars, and a skateboard, suggests money will flood things to quell Sanders and Warren. Warren may be a victim of NOT running last cycle when folks were crying for her to do it and her public profile was higher than Bernie's. At a guess, the money will be flowed to try to blunt Bernie's momentum with Warren not a favorite of the folks she'd like to see regulated. In the next few days following the money, seeing who's funding Kamala and Beto will be important.
Joe Biden has said he will be more sensitive to what might make women uncomfortable when touched; so Wall Street likely is ready to do an attaJoe. The issue of insensitivity to the personal space of others seems far less a cause to fault Biden than who he's been politically for the last fifty years, and how we can do better.
When Biden enters, will his cash draw lessen the drawing power of Beto, of Kamala, or both? At a guess he'd not cut into the love shown Bernie for his having fought the good fight in 2016.
As to Trump, that he won with Pence as a running mate clearly is less a show of strength than a critique of the Clinton-Kaine ho-hum. Running against a radically right-wing ticket with a slightly right-wing ticket failed for Clinton; so what's Biden's plan? Bark like a Blue Dog? Hope voters have ultra-short memories? As part of the Obama disappointment, what?
BOTTOM LINE HERE: Trust Bernie. Trust Warren. Consistency matters. For the others, a fair skepticism is okay.
____________UPDATE____________
NYTimes:
At fund-raising events, attendees say, most 2020 candidates typically are delivering more intimate versions of their stump speeches, pitching their vision for the country along with a heavy dosage on their political viability and pathway to the presidency, amid caterers circulating with drinks and snacks.
Last Tuesday, Ms. Harris was in the tony Washington neighborhood of Kalorama at an event where hosts were asked to raise at least $10,000 (although the price points were not listed on the front of at least one version of the emailed invitation). The Saturday before that, Mr. Booker was feted at the home of Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey as the singer Jon Bon Jovi circulated in the crowd ahead of a three-course dinner that pulled in $300,000, according to a person familiar with the event. And before that, Senator Amy Klobuchar was in Chicago asking for money at the home of a former Goldman Sachs banker who later served as ambassador to Canada, Bruce A. Heyman.
Another NYTimes item:
[...] Unlike Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren, who have sworn off big-money fund-raisers, Ms. Harris has raced across the country to appear at events where donors give as much as $2,800 to attend; last week she held fund-raisers in Texas and California.
[...] The biggest moment, which one Harris adviser called “transformational,” was the confirmation fight over Justice Kavanaugh.
She launched an online petition to stop the nomination that garnered more than 1 million signatures, according to ads she ran on Facebook — a gargantuan sum for a grass-roots effort. Those signers are now part of her email database.
Records show that Ms. Harris’s list grew steadily in strength as her presidential bid approached: Eight of her top 10 days for the number of online donations came in the last four months of 2018, according to ActBlue data. In contrast, none of Ms. Gillibrand’s top 10 days, and only two of Ms. Warren’s, came in that time period; for Ms. Warren, one of them was Dec. 31, the day she announced her bid for president.
Green in big chuncks, Harris takes it. Green in little giving, Harris takes it.
Green from Big Pharma, who's gotten it; who's going to get it; who's going to want to have that publicly shown, (besides Trump who feels no shame); and will the press dutifully decline from reporting who/what Big Pharma will be buying for how much? As they've declined to emphasize in the past?
There is some online opining and reporting; e.g., here and here. Not Fox, not the major networks, . . .
With death-dealing drug pricing, the stigma is there, not as bad health-industrial complex wide as with the Sacklers in particular, with their opioid profiteering; but - there.
OpenSecrets.org lists pharma money to House members and Senate members; with O'Rourke in the House top twenty; Gillibrand comparably placed in the Senate. BEAR THAT IN MIND.