When Elizabeth Warren sent out a plea to supporters last week for critically needed funds as her campaign geared up for Super Tuesday, she set a goal of raising $7 million before the Nevada caucuses. At that moment, the media had already edited Warren out of the 2020 narrative, talking almost exclusively about Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden coming out of Iowa, and then adding Amy Klobuchar into the mix as the token female worth mentioning following her surprise third-place finish in New Hampshire.
Reporters and pundits had effectively left Warren's campaign for dead. Nonetheless, she was hanging on to fourth place nationally (behind Sanders, Biden, and Bloomberg), and although she had dropped several points in the past month, she hadn't cratered as precipitously as Biden.
But even as the media was writing Warren off, she appeared to have a pretty stubborn base of support. Four days into the campaign's 10-day goal of raising $7 million, it had blown past the halfway mark, raising over $3.5 million. Then came Wednesday's Democratic debate, and Warren's fundraising numbers took flight like a rocket ship.
First, the campaign dusted the $7 million benchmark, setting another goal Thursday morning of reaching $10 million before Saturday's caucuses. By Thursday afternoon, the campaign recalibrated upward again to $12 million before caucus day.
On the way to meeting those goals, here's what happened:
Those are some incredible milestones and, to be clear, Warren's campaign needed to pass them. In fact, almost every nonbillionaire campaign but Bernie Sanders' was running pretty low at the close of January. Here's cash on hand for each campaign at the end of last month:
- Sanders: $16.8 million
- Biden: $7.1 million
- Buttigieg: $6.6 million
- Klobuchar: $2.9 million
- Warren: $2.3 million
The numbers for Bloomberg and Tom Steyer aren't really relevant, though Bloomberg spent an eye-popping $220.6 million in January alone, and Steyer forked out $52.9 million.
But the main takeaway from Warren’s fundraising haul is that, far from the popular narrative of her campaign running out of steam, she proved to have a loyal base of supporters that helped her through leaner times, and then she supercharged that fundraising effort with her electric debate performance.
On top of all that, a pro-Warren super PAC also got into the ring this week, making a seven-figure ad buy in Nevada before the caucuses. The media has had a field day with this, given the fact that Warren has opposed the influence of super PACs all along. But with Klobuchar also picking up super PAC support this week, and all the male candidates benefitting from super PACs, Warren's embracing the help.
"So here’s where I stand: If all the candidates want to get rid of super PACs, count me in — I’ll lead the charge," she told reporters at a campaign stop Thursday. "But that’s how it has to be. It can’t be the case that a bunch of people keep them and only one or two don’t.
"We reached the point a few weeks ago where all of the men who were on the debate stage all had either super PACs or they were multibillionaires who could rummage around in their sock drawers and find enough money to be able to fund a campaign, and the only people who didn’t have them were the two women," Warren added.
Frankly, who can blame her? If the media won't cover your campaign, then getting on the airwaves to compete with the other candidates becomes even more critical.
Bottom line: Warren turned over a new leaf this week in this campaign in more ways than one, and she continues to have a deep well of support for her candidacy.