For the first time since officially entering the campaign trail, Joe Biden left on Wednesday to raise money for a presidential campaign that could once again break all financial records.
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The American President has to attend two receptions with wealthy donors in Manhattan after a speech with economic and social content in north New York.
According to the CNBC chain, one is being organized by a former Blackstone executive, Tony James, who was recently elected to a White House oversight committee. The ticket for this event is set at $25,000 per person, according to CNBC.
The other reception is hosted by businessman George Logothetis.
Outside the United States, these gatherings in luxurious apartments or opulent mansions that mix worldliness, politics and big money pose a challenge, especially when attended by an incumbent head of state.
In America, money is not only the nerve of the electoral war, it is also considered a barometer of the dynamics from which this or that candidate does or does not benefit.
Biden’s campaign advisors have told the Washington Post that they hope to raise more than $2 billion across various channels, hopefully to promote 80-year-old Joe Biden to a second term.
In the camp of his fiercest opponent Donald Trump, there are assurances that the recent and spectacular indictment against the Republican billionaire has led to a sharp increase in financial donations.
In a country where election campaigns are already brewing astronomical sums, political finance NGO Open Secrets estimates that the 2024 presidential election could be the costliest in American history.
For 2020, spending for all candidates and organizations combined totaled $5.7 billion, more than double the spending for the previous presidential election, the NGO calculated.
The donations aren’t just coming from billionaires or multinationals: According to Open Secrets, Joe Biden received around $400 million in small donations for his 2020 campaign, less than $200 each.
The American media assures that the Democrat can again count on big names from business and technology. But what about these smaller donations this time?
Recent polls are not good for Joe Biden, handicapped by his age and high cost of living.
A recent opinion poll commissioned by the Washington Post and the ABC chain found that 68% of Americans think he’s too old to serve a second term. Only 44% think the same about 76-year-old Donald Trump.
And the president’s confidence rating hit a new low at 36%, according to the same poll — worse, at the same stage of their presidencies, than Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, three presidents who had failed to revive. chosen.
Joe Biden therefore cannot afford to be left behind financially by his predecessor, who started his election campaign last November.
The Republican former president said he raised about $18 million between November 15, 2022 and March 31, 2023, according to publicly available figures.
However, his campaign says that in the two weeks after he was charged with falsifying accounting records in New York on March 31, he raised almost as much — more than $15 million, Politico says.
As for Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who could soon join the campaign, he would be at the helm of a war chest of more than $100 million, according to American media.
However, the voting system in the United States is structured in such a way that it is difficult to know exactly how many millions a particular candidate has.
Depending on whether the donations go to the candidates, to their “PACs” or to their “Super PACs”, the regulation is more or less restrictive.
These “political action committees” are a kind of investment fund that play a significant, if sometimes covert, role in the campaigns.