By Nicholas Confessore & Nick Corasaniti, New York Times–
Donald Trump all but erased his enormous fund-raising disadvantage against Hillary Clinton in the span of just two months, according to figures released by his campaign on Wednesday, converting the passion of his core followers into a flood of small donations on a scale rarely seen in national politics.
“She’s been doing this for 20 years,” said Steven Mnuchin, a New York investor who is Mr. Trump’s finance chairman. “We’ve been doing it for two months.” More than two-thirds of the $64 million had come online, Mr. Mnuchin said.
The numbers released by the Trump campaign Wednesday are preliminary; official figures — including money spent on direct mail, which is typically expensive, and a precise breakdown of total cash raised in small increments — will become available when Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton file formal reports with the Federal Election Commission this month.
And Mrs. Clinton’s own fund-raising operation is rapidly expanding as well. In a Twitter post on Wednesday, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said that her campaign and a joint fund-raising operation with the Democratic National Committee had $102 million on hand, not including cash held directly by the party.
Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee and a wealthy man in his own right, was never able to stoke intense enthusiasm among small donors and relied disproportionately on big ones. During July of that year, for example, Mr. Romney and the Republican National Committee reported raising a total of just $19 million from contributions of less than $200.
With that in place, party officials unleashed a pent-up desire by rank-and-file Republicans to donate to a candidate who has bluntly attacked lobbyists and big donors. While Mr. Trump accepted online donations during the primary season, he did not send out an email solicitation until late June — which brought in $3 million alone, an indication of the well of money available to him.
“There was always that potential, but you didn’t have candidates who were as uniquely positioned in the same way that Trump is,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist who ran digital fund-raising at the Republican National Committee under President George W. Bush.
But Mr. Trump’s surge also emphasizes the complication for Republicans in having him at the head of their party. He is relying more on small-donor fund-raising in part because he has faced opposition from some of the party’s biggest patrons, such as Meg Whitman, a California business executive, who said Monday that she was so disgusted with Mr. Trump that she would vote for Mrs. Clinton.
To bolster his low-dollar fund-raising, Mr. Trump and his team are now working to assuage the broader pool of affluent Republican donors and fund-raisers. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has laid off his criticisms of the party’s donor class and scheduled an array of formal fund-raising events for Republican donors in money centers like Florida and New York.
Even as relations fray between Mr. Trump and some fellow Republicans, the party and Mr. Trump each needs the other. And Mr. Trump, as the nominee and the fund-raising tent pole for the party, may have the upper hand.
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