2020 Election: Pete Buttigieg raises $25m in three months for presidential bid
Pete Buttigieg’s campaign to become US president has raised almost $25m in the last three months – a major bump compared to the previous period.
The campaign of the former South Bend mayor, who leads polls in Iowa, the first state to vote, announced it had raised $24.7m in the fourth quarter. The total for the third quarter was $19.1m.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us, but unlike a year ago, we are doing it from a position of great strength, with a powerful national grassroots base of support,” the 37-year-old wrote to supporters on New Year’s Eve.
“In a formidable field of Democratic leaders, there’s no candidate I want to trade places with. And there is certainly no set of people I would rather be working with than you, our team of supporters across the country.”
In recent weeks, Mr Buttigieg, whose term as mayor of the Indiana town officially ended with the beginning of 2020, has found himself at the centre of controversy over where he gets his donations.
After it emerged he held a fundraising event at a high-end California winery, Democratic rival Elizabeth Warren accused him of raising money from “millionaires and billionaires”.
“We made the decision many years ago that rich people in smoke-filled rooms would not pick the next president of the United States,” she said during the most recent Democratic debate. “Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States.”
Mr Buttigieg accused Ms Warren of seeking to enforce a “purity test” that she herself could not match, and pointing to a Forbes article that suggested he alone among the candidates on stage was not a millionaire or billionaire.
“This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass,” he said. “Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine.”
On Wednesday, Mr Buttigieg’s spokesperson, Chris Meagher, released a statement saying the campaign had received over 2m donations from more than 733,000 individuals in 2019, bringing the total of the fundraising efforts to over $76m for the entirety of 2019.
He said: “It’s clear the American people are responding to Pete’s message of rallying our country together around bold solutions that will build the coalition we need to beat Trump and usher in a new era the day after Trump leaves office.”
Read more
AOC attacks Buttigieg over fundraising: ‘It’s called giving a damn’
Warren and Buttigieg clash over ‘purity tests’ and wine caves
Biden wins endorsement from black mayor of Alabama’s largest city
