US vice-president Kamala Harris has raised $200 million (€184 million) for her White House run in less than a week, her campaign said on Sunday, as she hopes that the surge in funding will boost her chances against rival Donald Trump.
The announcement came as the duel between Harris and Trump on the campaign trail intensified.
US president Joe Biden ditched his re-election bid and endorsed the vice-president to succeed him just a week ago, in a move that radically reshaped the race.
Since then Harris has quickly united the Democratic Party behind her candidacy and gained some ground against Trump in the opinion polls, compared to Biden’s performance.
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She is vetting vice-presidential nominees and is expected to announce her choice in the next two weeks.
But at a fundraiser in Massachusetts on Saturday, Harris conceded that Trump remained the favourite in the election, which will be held 100 days from now, in early November.
“We are the underdogs in this race, but this is a people-powered campaign,” Harris told the donors.
One of her key tasks is to boost fundraising to make up for a slowdown in donations to Biden after his disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June.
Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler called the first week’s $200 million a “record-shattering haul”.
“Of that amount, 66 per cent came from first-time donors, further proof of the tremendous grassroots support for the vice-president,” he said.
At a rally in Minnesota on Saturday night, two weeks after he survived an assassination attempt, Trump lashed out at Harris, calling her “evil” as he tried to adjust his campaign to target her instead of Biden.
“If a crazy liberal like Kamala Harris gets in, the American dream is dead,” Trump said.
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After the attack on his life, Trump had briefly called for “unity” in American politics. But on Saturday, he suggested the time for niceties was already over.
“They all say, ‘I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him’,” Trump told the crowd. “No, I haven’t changed ... Maybe I’ve gotten worse. Because I get angry at the incompetence that I witness every single day.”
On Friday, Trump attracted criticism for telling a group of Christian conservatives that they would not have to “vote any more” in four years if they helped elect him this year.
Harris and her campaign are also honing their attacks on Trump. She has sought to emphasise that he is a threat to Americans’ basic freedoms, from abortion rights to voting rights and economic security. She has also called out Trump and his running mate JD Vance for being bizarre and extreme.
“You may have noticed, Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record. And some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it’s just plain weird. I mean that’s the box you put that in,” she said on Saturday.
When Biden left the race a week ago, Trump was leading by 3.2 percentage points in national polling, according to the Fivethirtyeight.com average. But since then, there have been signs that Harris is closing the gap.
A Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump leading Harris by 2 percentage points among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup and trailing Harris by 1 percentage point when third-party candidates are included. Some swing state polls have also shown a tighter race, including Fox News surveys that found the race between Trump and Harris tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
New Hampshire Republican governor Chris Sununu, a former Trump critic who has since embraced him, acknowledged that Harris’s entry had created “a whole new race” and Democrats would have “momentum” heading into their convention next month.
But he also said that the “honeymoon” period would end in September and, as long as Trump shied away from “personal attacks” and focused on policy differences including the economy and immigration, he would have a better message.
“Hopefully the numbers, the polls, will get Donald Trump to realise what was working and what didn’t,” Mr Sununu told ABC.
But on the same TV programme, Democratic governor of Illinois JB Pritzker said the winds were visibly shifting towards Harris.
“The electorate is energised. Democrats are ready to go. You’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people signing up to volunteer,” he said.
— Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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