“I’m completely stunned.”
That’s the reaction of Charles Gaba, a Michigan health care analyst and Democrat who helps fundraise for other Democrats across the country through his website blue24.org.
Gaba said that in the less than 48 hours since President Joe Biden announced on Sunday he would not seek reelection and then quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, there has been a flurry of donations through his site to Harris’ campaign, raising more than $2.5 million. That’s part of the record-breaking $100 million her campaign has raised in that time.
“You’ve seen over the last day and a half, a remarkable coalition coalescing all the various players and parties involved, and that’s clearly being reflected in the fundraising as well,” Gaba told the Michigan Advance.
He believes that all of the uncertainty that had been building both within and outside the Democratic Party since Biden’s poor debate performance, was at least in part, alleviated by the certainty of a Harris candidacy.
“I was in the he-should-stick-it-out camp, myself, but I wasn’t adamant that it had to be. I just felt that made more sense,” said Gaba. “Clearly, there were millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people anyway, who were basically like, ‘Shut up and take my money. I want to give, but I just don’t know who to give to.’”
Gaba pointed out his website is not a political action committee, but instead something he created on his own that simply provides convenient links to the official fundraising pages of Democratic candidates. He does not take a cut.
Gaba says prior to Biden’s announcement, he had raised a total of around $870,000 for all 600 candidates he has linked to at the federal and state legislative levels.
“Since then, I’ve raised another $2.7 million and 98% of that has been for Vice President Harris. Just to give you an idea of the intensity of it, my presidential fundraising has jumped from 1% of what I’ve raised to something like 75% in the last two days,” said Gaba.
But he hopes that the fundraising spike will also benefit state candidates, and he encourages Democrats looking to donate to do so with those campaigns, as well.
“I’m obviously thrilled and amazed at how effective Kamala Harris’ fundraising has been, but I would strongly urge and advise people who want to support Democrats to donate down ballot as well, down to and including the state legislative races, because those are the races that tend to be forgotten. And ironically, that’s actually where I was hoping to focus my efforts this cycle,” said Gaba.
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.
