How Trump's Billion-Dollar Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage

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A rally for President Trump in Latrobe, Penn. Mr. Trump’s campaign has spent $800 million.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

How Trump’s Billion-Dollar Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/us/politics/trump-election-campaign-fundraising.html

Five months ago, President Trump’s re-election campaign had a huge financial edge over Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s. The Times conducted an extensive review of how the Trump team spent lavishly to show how that advantage evaporated.

A rally for President Trump in Latrobe, Penn. Mr. Trump’s campaign has spent $800 million.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times


By Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman

Sept. 7, 2020 Updated 6:21 p.m. ET

Money was supposed to have been one of the great advantages of incumbency for President Trump, much as it was for President Barack Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004. After getting outspent in 2016, Mr. Trump filed for re-election on the day of his inauguration — earlier than any other modern president — betting that the head start would deliver him a decisive financial advantage this year.

It seemed to have worked. His rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was relatively broke when he emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee this spring, and Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee had a nearly $200 million cash advantage.

Five months later, Mr. Trump’s financial supremacy has evaporated. Of the $1.1 billon his campaign and the party raised from the beginning of 2019 through July, more than $800 million has already been spent. Now some people inside the campaign are forecasting what was once unthinkable: a cash crunch with less than 60 days until the election, according to Republican officials briefed on the matter.

Brad Parscale, the former campaign manager, liked to call Mr. Trump’s re-election war machine an “unstoppable juggernaut.” But interviews with more than a dozen current and former campaign aides and Trump allies, and a review of thousands of items in federal campaign filings, show that the president’s campaign and the R.N.C. developed some profligate habits as they burned through hundreds of millions of dollars. Since Bill Stepien replaced Mr. Parscale in July, the campaign has imposed a series of belt-tightening measures that have reshaped initiatives, including hiring practices, travel and the advertising budget...............


.......There have been other squandered costs driven by Mr. Trump’s sometimes mercurial desires. He switched his convention plans twice, incurring many expenses along the way. In July, for instance, the R.N.C. made a $325,000 payment to the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island near Jacksonville for the convention there that never happened. The party is not expected to get that money back.