Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign said Wednesday it raised $9.4 million in the first 18 days since he announced his candidacy.
The campaign said it had 218,000 contributions and raised an average of $520,000 per day “without taking a dime from PACs, special interests, lobbyists and corporations.” The average campaign donation was $43.
“O’Rourke continues to be the highest per-day raising candidate in the Democratic primary,” his campaign said.
The number of contributors is unclear. The Democratic National Committee set a 65,000-individual-donor threshold for candidates to compete on the debate stage.
The fundraising total falls well below the $18.2 million that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., raised in the first quarter of 2019. However, Sanders declared he was running for president a month before O’Rourke launched his campaign. The 2020 campaign is Sanders’ second run for president.
Sen. Kamala Harris, who announced her campaign on Jan. 21, raised $12 million. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg has raised $7 million since announcing his presidential exploratory committee on Jan. 23. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has raised $1.7 million since Nov. 6, 2017.
O’Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso, Texas, raised more than $6 million online in the first 24 hours of his campaign. That amount set a record for 2020 Democratic candidates, narrowly beating Sanders, who raised $5.9 million in his campaign’s first day.