Bernie Sanders raises $25.3 million in third quarter for 2020 campaign

[October 01, 2019]  By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders raised $25.3 million in the third quarter of 2019 for his White House run, his campaign said on Tuesday, piling up 1.4 million individual donations and surpassing the $18 million he raised in the second quarter.

Campaign officials for Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, said the big fundraising haul was evidence of his continued strength in the Democratic presidential race despite slipping in some public opinion polls in the last month or two.

Sanders, who had been running second to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in most Democratic presidential polls for months, has also fallen behind fellow progressive Elizabeth Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, in several recent polls.

"Media elites and professional pundits have tried repeatedly to dismiss this campaign, and yet working-class Americans keep saying loudly and clearly that they want a political revolution," Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a statement.

Sanders was the first of the 19 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 to report a third-quarter total. The haul for Sanders surpasses the top Democratic fundraising total in the second quarter, the $24.8 million raised by rival Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

The campaign rushed to make the strong fundraising numbers public, releasing them to reporters just minutes after the Federal Election Commission's quarterly deadline for reporting fundraising totals, which came at midnight on Monday.

Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at a campaign stop in Hooksett, New Hampshire, U.S., September 30, 2019. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Campaigns must file detailed financial reports by Oct. 15. The campaign said Sanders has raised a total of $61.5 million since he launched his bid in February.

Shakir and other Sanders officials have pointed to the grassroots, small-dollar nature of his fundraising as a sign of the breadth of his support.

The campaign said the final day of the third quarter on Monday was Sanders' second biggest fundraising day of the campaign, although it did not give a total. The average donation for the quarter was $18.07.

Nearly all of Sanders' donors had not hit their maximum allowed contribution, the campaign said, meaning they can give again as the race rolls on. The first state nominating contest, in Iowa, will be on Feb. 3, 2020.

Sanders also transferred $2.6 million from other campaign accounts to help fund his race, the campaign said.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

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