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A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the gift card promotion had spurred 20,000 donations to North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum's (R) campaign. At the time of publication the campaign said it was on pace to spur 20,000 donations. This article has been corrected.
In their attempt to break through a crowded field, some Republican presidential candidates are struggling with one of the initial steps: attracting enough individual donors to qualify for the GOP’s primary debates.
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To make the stage for the first debate, set for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee, a candidate must poll at least 1 percent in three polls approved by the Republican National Committee, as well as have at least 40,000 individual donors. If enough candidates qualify, there could be a second debate on Aug. 24.
The requirements are intended to ensure that the party’s eventual nominee has built significant grass-roots support and is “in the best position to take back the White House” next November, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said last month. For some candidates — such as former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — the requirements have been more of a formality than a challenge.
But lesser-known candidates have been resorting to unusual tactics to try to meet the individual donor threshold. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), who announced a long-shot campaign in early June, recently launched an initiative on his WinRed fundraising page to give a $20 gift card to the first 50,000 people to donate at least $1 to his campaign.
Burgum’s campaign has billed the gift cards as “Biden Economic Relief cards” and an attempt to help his supporters with “the burden on American families caused by the Democrats.”
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“We want to help, so we’re offering YOU a $20 gift card, and all YOU have to do is contribute $1 to claim it,” his campaign’s WinRed page announces. Burgum confirmed on Twitter on Monday that 50,000 people would receive a Visa or Mastercard gift card at their mailing addresses.
“Doug knows people are hurting because of Bidenflation and giving Biden Economic Relief Gift Cards is a way to help 50,000 people until Doug is elected President to fix this crazy economy for everyone,” Burgum campaign spokesman Lance Trover said in an email. “It also allows us to secure a spot on the debate stage while avoiding paying more advertising fees to social media platforms who have owners that are hostile to conservatives.”
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But the plan, first reported by the political newsletter FWIW News, has raised eyebrows from campaign finance experts and even people within Republican circles, who have accused the independently wealthy Burgum of paying for support.
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“It’s illegal to contribute to candidate in someone else’s name,” Paul Seamus Ryan, a campaign finance lawyer, said in a tweet. “[Burgum is] contributing to his own campaign in the name of these straw donors.”
Still, the campaign said its lawyers had reviewed the gift card giveaway plan and were confident that it is legal, according to a person close to the campaign who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal decisions. That person also said the promotion put them on pace to spur 20,000 individual donations to Burgum’s campaign in 48 hours and pointed to a recent interview by Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, who told Politico that there was “a tremendous amount of flexibility” in how campaigns can spend their money.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has said he has already met the 40,000-donor threshold for the first debate, on Monday launched a plan in which his supporters can make 10 percent of the money they raise for his campaign through dedicated fundraising links, calling it “Vivek’s Kitchen Cabinet.” The program was immediately met with both praise and criticism that it was a “pyramid scheme.”
In a video to his supporters, Ramaswamy defended the plan and blasted the current system in which campaign “bundlers,” who raise large amounts of money for candidates, get to keep a large percentage of what they raise.
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“I don’t like the system as it exists. But if that’s the system we’re going to have, my view is: Let’s democratize that and make it possible for everybody to make money as well,” Ramaswamy said. “If somebody in some cloistered corner office is going to make 10 percent of the money they would raise for me or other candidates, it might as well be you … And believe me, if you can sell a politician’s vision, you can sell anything in this country.”
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Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has tweeted consistently about his need to reach the 40,000-donor mark, while several other candidates in the Republican field have remained quiet about their fundraising numbers. Former vice president Mike Pence, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) all recently expressed confidence to Axios that they would qualify for the first GOP debate, but did not reveal if they had reached the 40,000 individual donors needed. The political action committee founded by former congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, has been encouraging people to donate to Christie to “GET THE TRUTH ON STAGE!”
The SOS America super PAC supporting Suarez has placed a series of digital ads in early states like New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada, according to data from AdImpact. Touting Suarez’s status as the only prominent Hispanic candidate for president, the PAC is directing voters to an Adiós Biden website that asks them to give $1 to get an “Adiós Biden” bumper sticker. The super PAC’s website directs the voters to a portal that direct their contributions to Suarez for President Inc., which is his official campaign committee. (Super PACs cannot coordinate directly with the campaigns they are set up to benefit). The group is also placing ads on cable television starting in mid-July in cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, Birmingham, Ala., and Charlotte, according to AdImpact — an effort that will reach a more diverse group of potential donors than the early states.
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Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson said last week that he had only about 5,000 of the 40,000 individual donors required to appear at the first debate, though he has met the RNC’s polling requirement. The moderate governor, who has been a consistent critic of Trump, vowed his campaign would get to 40,000 donors before the first debate, but he took issue with the RNC setting what he called an “artificial line” for candidates to cross.
“We ought to be more expansive than that rather than restrictive,” Hutchinson said on “the Hugh Hewitt Show,” a conservative podcast. “You think about 40,000 donors, what does it take to get 40,000 donors? Perhaps it takes an explosive rhetoric in which you’re totally uncontrolled and undisciplined, and that gets people excited, or you have to spend a lot of money to get there.”
Representatives for the campaigns for Hutchinson and Ramaswamy did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
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Though campaign finance reports for the second quarter of the year are not yet available from the Federal Election Commission, several GOP candidates have reported massive fundraising totals. Trump’s joint fundraising committee raised $35 million in the second quarter of this year, according to two of his aides. The money was raised through his joint fundraising committee — dividing the cash that he raised between his official campaign and his leadership PAC, Save America, which he has used to pay some of his legal bills.
The $35 million figure is nearly twice what Trump raised through his political groups in the first quarter, demonstrating the intense loyalty and level of engagement of his supporters.
DeSantis’s campaign said it had raised $20 million in the six weeks since his campaign launched, but did not say how much cash it had in its campaign account at the end of the second quarter. It also did not disclose the size of the average donation it received. DeSantis also has the support of the super PAC Never Back Down, which has raised $130 million since launching.
Former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced this week that her campaign had raised $7.3 million in the second quarter, with nearly 160,000 donations from all 50 states since she announced her bid.
Maeve Reston contributed to this report.
2024 presidential candidates Several major Republican candidates and three Democrats have officially declared they are running for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, and others are making moves. We’re tracking 2024 presidential candidates here.
Republicans: Top contenders for the GOP 2024 nomination include former president Donald Trump, who announced in November, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024.
Democrats: President Biden has officially announced he is running for reelection in 2024. Author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine advocate Robert Kennedy Jr., both long-shot candidates, are also seeking the Democratic nomination. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024.
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