Washington — Reelection campaign of President Joe Biden is raising a lot of money. Its election-year approach is to spend more and faster. In addition to fundraising this month, Biden's team is making huge early investments on the ground and on the airwaves to create a massive organizational edge that leaves Republican Donald Trump scrambling.
While the money has given Biden and the Democrats a cash advantage, it's becoming evident he'll need it. Trump's provocations have garnered him near-constant free media exposure in business and politics. Despite becoming president, Biden has struggled to communicate.
That means Biden will require lots of money to blanket battleground states where a few thousand votes could decide the winner. In a more fragmented media ecosystem that favors streaming services over broadcast and cable, addressing millennials and younger voters, who were crucial to his 2020 coalition, is difficult.
This month, Biden's team opened 100 new field offices and increased paid workers in battleground states to 350 after his State of the Union address. It is also running a $30 million television and internet advertising campaign targeting Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters.
According to Biden campaign executives, the incumbent president's February reelection campaign had 480 staffers, compared to 311 for Trump and the Republican National Committee.
We're ramping up campaign headquarters and field offices, hiring staff nationwide before Trump and his MAGA Republicans have even opened one office," Biden boasted Friday in New York during a national finance committee meeting with 200 of his largest donors and fundraisers from the city.
Democrats remember how Trump won the presidency in 2016 despite a huge ground game disadvantage. “It’s one of the stubborn challenges of Trump,” said Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook. "Trump is Trump's best organizer and can motivate from the podium."
However, Mook said the Biden campaign is doing what it needs to do, citing the State of the Union as a good example of how to rally the base and harness the anti-Trump fervor that will energize many Democrats this year.
The most magical and the scariest part of politics is, you never know until Election Day,” Mook remarked. "If I were them, I wouldn't leave anything on the table, and the great thing about having a resource advantage is, you get all these things." Even Biden's brick-and-mortar campaign may cost more this year.
Biden will need to travel more and establish a more expensive political infrastructure than the socially distant, virtual campaign he ran from his basement in 2020, when many Americans were huddled down due to the pandemic.
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