Buttigieg issues new plea for cash amid Super Tuesday crunch
February 20, 2020
LAS VEGAS — Pete Buttigieg’s campaign set a goal of raising $13 million by Super Tuesday in an urgent new fundraising message, a sign of the financial pinch Buttigieg and other Democrats are feeling as they compete with billionaire Michael Bloomberg and online dynamo Bernie Sanders.
Buttigieg set himself up as an alternative to those candidates in an email going out to supporters Thursday afternoon, which was obtained first by POLITICO. "We are no longer just up against Bernie Sanders, the Washington politician who has been running for president for years," Buttigieg wrote in the email. "We are now also up against a billionaire who is throwing colossal sums of money on television instead of doing the work of campaigning."
"That’s not how we should choose a president," Buttigieg continued. "So today we’re being honest with the folks who’ve gotten us here: We need to raise a significant amount of money -- about $13 million -- before Super Tuesday on March 3rd in order to stay competitive."
The email also announces that the Buttigieg campaign raised $6 million last month, followed by $11 million so far in February, after Buttigieg finished in the top two in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
The fundraising plea is an acknowledgment of how sharply the last two months of the 2020 campaign have separated a few well-funded campaigns from others scraping to survive after emptying their campaign accounts in the first four states. But in two weeks, the race widens from small early states to a 14-state, coast-to-coast blowout on Super Tuesday.
Sanders, who raised $25 million in January, and especially billionaires Bloomberg and Tom Steyer are already pouring millions of dollars into advertising in expensive California and Texas, the biggest Super Tuesday prizes — but no other candidates have been able to join them on the airwaves there so far.
Amy Klobuchar’s campaign announced Thursday that it would begin a seven-figure ad buy across seven smaller Super Tuesday states, while Elizabeth Warren has aired ads in Colorado and Maine. But Buttigieg has yet to begin running TV spots in the Super Tuesday states, though he has put up digital ads in some of them.
This is not the first time Buttigieg — or other 2020 rivals — have set a public fundraising goal to gin up enthusiasm and pry open supporters’ wallets. But it’s the largest ask yet from Buttigieg, who didn't get to ride the traditional wave of momentum, following long-delayed results out of Iowa, that would have come from his top-two finish there. (The Iowa Democratic Party is now conducting a recount of the Feb. 3 caucus results, after a recanvass showed Buttigieg with a state delegate lead over Sanders amounting to less than a hundredth of a percentage point.)
Buttigieg’s campaign also released a memo Thursday morning, accusing Bloomberg of propelling Sanders toward the Democratic nomination.
"If Bloomberg remains in the race despite showing he can not offer a viable alternative to Bernie Sanders, he will propel Sanders to a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead siphoning votes away from Pete, the current leader in delegates," the memo reads.
Bloomberg's campaign released a memo of its own on Wednesday calling on other candidates, including Buttigieg, to drop out of the race in order to deny Sanders the nomination.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
