Mr. Biden has the advantage of national name recognition and broad popularity among Democrats. But he is also expected to quickly assemble a robust staff that must be paid.
On Thursday, his campaign announced 26 “key campaign hires” who will work for Mr. Biden at the national level, and it has even more people lined up in the states that will begin the nominating contest: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
[Read more: Mr. Biden declined to directly apologize to Anita Hill on Friday.]
Mr. Biden spent his first evening as a presidential candidate at the Philadelphia-area home of David L. Cohen, a top executive at Comcast and a former political operative who is one of the Democratic Party’s leading fund-raisers.
A roster of prominent Pennsylvania politicians were listed as hosts of the event, as well as, among others, Daniel J. Hilferty, the chief executive of the major health insurer Independence Health Group, the parent of Independence Blue Cross.
“It’s gauche to talk about money, so I’m not going to talk about money,” Mr. Cohen said at the fund-raiser, according to a recording of his remarks. “But all I’m going to say is that once again this group has produced an event that is off the charts, beyond anyone’s expectations.”
Mr. Biden’s rivals took note of his entry. Mr. Sanders, Mr. O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris and Jay Inslee all emailed supporters with Mr. Biden’s name in the subject line on Thursday to gin up their own donations.
The message from Mr. Sanders’s campaign was pointed about how Mr. Biden was spending his evening. “It’s a big day in the Democratic primary and we’re hoping to end it strong,” the email said. “Not with a fundraiser in the home of a corporate lobbyist, but with an overwhelming number of individual donations.”
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/us/politics/joe-biden-2020-fundraising.html
Comments