Democratic donors putting money on hold over objections to Biden's candidacy - report
Deep-pocketed Democratic donors are putting multimillion-dollar pledges on hold and saying they won’t hand over the money until Joe Biden abandons his re-election campaign, the New York Times reports.
Others are holding off on giving any more money to Future Forward, the largest Super Pac supporting the president’s campaign.
The report was the latest indication that Biden had done himself serious damage with his poor performance against Donald Trump at their debate last month. Biden nonetheless has insisted he is staying in, though yesterday noted that he could change his mind if his advisors or polling tell him that he cannot win.
Here’s more, from the Times:
The frozen contributions include multiple eight-figure commitments, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation. The decision to withhold such enormous sums of money is one of the most concrete examples of the fallout from Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance at the end of June.
Future Forward declined to comment on any conversations with donors or the amounts of any pledged money being withheld. A Future Forward adviser would say only that the group expected contributors who had paused donations to return once the current uncertainty about the ticket was resolved.
Separately, one donor to the group described being approached multiple times by Future Forward since the debate for a contribution, but said he and his friends had been “holding off”.
The two people briefed on the frozen pledges declined to say which individual donors were pulling back promised checks, which were estimated to total around or above $90m. It was not clear how much of the pledged money was earmarked for Future Forward’s Super Pac versus its nonprofit arm, which has also been running advertising in key battleground states.
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