Democratic Party hopefuls bombarded supporters with a collective total of more than 80 emails ahead of Monday's third-quarter fundraising deadline, asking for campaign donations.
Their pleas for amounts ranging from $5-$50 dollars came after hopeful Cory Booker suggested he would have to drop out of the race if he didn't bump up his campaign pot, and as other less popular candidates face the challenge of meeting fundraiser thresholds set by the DNC, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
"If you are being outraised 3-to-1 by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, you have no viable path to victory," Rufus Gifford, Barack Obama's former finance director, told the AP.
"Even if you can compete in the early states ... shortly thereafter you will run out of money," he added.
On social media, the account @demprimaryemail was set up to monitor the candidates' emails in real-time, while other users questioned the email content and the number of emails they had received.
The Biden campaign sends a fundraising email warning about Trump fundraising more than $5m off impeachment:
— Molly Nagle (@MollyNagle3) September 26, 2019
“Please -- Will you help us show Trump & the donors rallying to his side that the American people will do whatever it (legally) takes to make Trump a one-term President?”
One thing I like about the fundraising emails from @ewarren is that they’re signed “Team Warren.” They don’t even pretend that Elizabeth Warren is sitting down to write two fundraising emails a day!
— Patrick Stephenson (@patiomensch) September 29, 2019
Elizabeth Warren's endless fundraising emails have convinced me she can't possibly win, she has no money. How does she eat?
— @landley (@landley) September 25, 2019
Booker reached his campaign goal by Monday, tweeting: "I have some incredible news, team. Last night at 8:16 p.m., we reached our $1.7 million goal. I'm so grateful that at the most critical moment of this campaign, thousands of people in all 50 states came together to give us the boost we needed."
In an email to his supporters, Booker added that he was "staying in this race."
For high-profile hopefuls such as Bernie Sanders, the fundraising push appeared to have paid off to an even greater extent, with his aides announcing Tuesday he had raised $25 million in his campaign's third quarter, Politico reported.
"Bernie is proud to be the only candidate running to defeat Donald Trump who is 100 percent funded by grassroots donations—both in the primary and in the general," Sanders' campaign manager, Faiz Shakir said, his campaign also highlighting that the average donation they received was just over $18—similar to the average they reported in July 2019.
"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," Shakir added.
But the final Democrat pick may have an uphill battle to match the fundraising donations of President Donald Trump and the RNC, who in addition to raising more money since the start of 2019 than all of the Democrat candidates combined, managed to raise $13 million in just three days following the announcement of an impeachment inquiry by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week.
The Democrats have also used the impeachment inquiry as an opportunity to bolster their coffers, with Biden, Kamala Harris, Sanders and Warren also mentioning the inquiry in fundraising emails.
