(Washington) For the first time since his official entry into the campaign, Joe Biden left on Wednesday to raise funds for a presidential battle which could once again break all financial records.
The American president participated in two receptions in New York with wealthy donors.
One took place in an apartment in the prestigious 5e Avenue, at a former executive of the investment company Blackstone, Tony James, recently chosen to sit on a supervisory committee at the White House.
In front of guests who, according to CNBC, paid an entry fee of $ 25,000 per person, Joe Biden, 80, addressed his main handicap in the campaign head-on.
He judged that his age was a “legitimate” subject and assured that he had not made the decision to represent himself “automatically”.
A recent opinion poll commissioned by the washington post and the ABC chain ensures that 68% of Americans consider him too old for a second term. Only 44% think the same of 76-year-old Donald Trump.
And the president’s trust rating, according to that same poll, hit a new low, at 36% — worse off, at the same stage of their presidencies, than Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, three presidents who failed to get re-elected.
Despite these lackluster polls, his camp displays great financial ambitions – in a country where money is not only the nerve of the electoral war, but is also considered a barometer of the dynamics of a candidate.
Campaign advisers to Joe Biden told the washington post that they hoped to raise more than $2 billion in total, through various channels, for the campaign.
In the camp of his most serious opponent, Donald Trump, it is assured that the recent and spectacular indictment of the Republican billionaire has caused financial contributions to jump.
Trump and DeSantis
PHOTO LOGAN CYRUS EVA AND MARIE UZCATEGUI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Former US President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
The NGO Open Secrets, which specializes in political finance, estimates that the 2024 presidential race could be the most expensive in American history, exceeding the 5.7 billion dollars spent for that of 2020. Which was already a record.
Joe Biden cannot afford to be left behind financially by his predecessor, who launched his campaign last November.
The Republican former president said he raised some $18 million between Nov. 15, 2022 and March 31, 2023, according to publicly available figures.
But his campaign says he raised almost as much — more than $15 million, Politico says — in the two weeks after he was charged in New York on March 31 in a case of falsification of accounting documents.
On the other hand, it is difficult to predict the impact on the Republican’s coffers of the decision of the civil court which declared him responsible for sexual assault on Tuesday.
The Republican governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, who could soon join the campaign, would, according to American media, be at the head of a war chest of more than 100 million dollars.
Electoral law in the United States is such that it is very difficult to know exactly how many millions a particular candidate has.
The regulation is not as restrictive depending on whether the donations go to the candidates, or to the financial vehicles that support them, in a more or less direct and transparent way: the “PACs”, the “Super PACs” and other “JACs”.
These truly political investment funds play an essential, albeit sometimes underground, role in the countryside.
The two receptions in which Joe Biden participated on Wednesday will benefit, for example, “Joint Action Committees”, organizations that are increasingly popular in the political world, which make it possible to raise larger sums.