How will President Biden’s exit from the presidential race affect campaign spending?
How will President Biden’s exit from the presidential race affect campaign spending?
Despite threats of legal challenges from the right, Vice President Kamala Harris’s camp appears poised to inherit just under $100 million from what was the Biden-Harris campaign. And Harris’ campaign raked in an additional $100 million in the 24 hours after Sunday’s shakeup — a record for a 24-hour period.
Plus, the biggest aggregator of campaign funds for Democrats, the Future Forward super PAC, says it has $150 million in new commitments from donors who were previously “stalled, uncertain or uncommitted.” So how will a new name at the top of the Democratic ticket change how campaign money is spent ahead of the November election?
Republicans pushing back on Harris’ ability to inherit campaign funds that were originally raised with Biden at the top of the ticket probably won’t get far, said Michael Kang, a professor of campaign finance law at Northwestern University.
“Even if the Republican arguments against Harris using the money were stronger,” he said.
And so far, Kang thinks they’re pretty unconvincing. “Really, campaign finance law enforcement right now is pretty weak.”
So, the Harris campaign can count on starting with a healthy budget, Kang added. And it’ll spend it differently than if Biden were still at the top of the ticket.
Previously, this was a race between two well-known candidates, without much new information to deliver to voters, according to Nicole Ovadia with the media intelligence firm BIA Advisory Services.
“We were expecting the Democrats on a Biden-led ticket to really be pushing ‘Come out to vote. If you don’t vote, Trump will win,'” she said.
Those ads would have ramped up in September and October, she noted. But with Harris likely taking over, “we definitely expect the Democrats to spend more earlier.”
That includes spending on TV and online ads, and emails and text messages to voters, all introducing Kamala Harris to the electorate ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention.
Biden dropping out also means that the GOP also needs to pivot on spending.
“They’re gonna have to completely rewrite the playbook,” said Sarah Bryner with OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics. “They probably had a whole encyclopedia of anti-Biden messaging ready to go.”
All that messaging was pretty cheap to get out there, since questions about Biden’s age already dominated media coverage.
But now, Bryner noted that both parties will have to shell out on new strategies and messaging.
“Everything I would have said a year ago about this election maybe not being wildly expensive?” After this massive shakeup, Bryner said she takes it all back.
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