Joe Biden to huddle with top donors as 2024 effort kicks off

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses will fete about 150 of the Democratic Party's top donors in Washington on Friday evening as they lay the groundwork for their reelection campaign, which is expected to need to raise well over USD 1 billion.

The summit is not a fundraiser, and it was unclear how many attendees had yet cut checks to Biden's campaign. Rather, it is billed as a strategy session for high-dollar donors and fundraisers who will tap their networks to help fund Biden's campaign over the next 18 months.

"In addition to a Friday evening dinner, top Biden advisers and his campaign co-chairs will brief attendees Saturday on the campaign's strategy ahead of the 2024 race to “fund winning campaigns from the top of the ticket on down," the campaign said.

“Now that he's thrown his hat back into the ring, the dam has burst and people are super excited and on board,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-chair of Biden's campaign.

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“We're at the beginning of the beginning. It's a marathon, not a sprint. And we are in an enviable position in that we're singularly focused on running and winning in November 2024 and all of our efforts and resources are really focused on that.”

Some Democratic lawmakers, including governors who have proven to be prolific party fundraisers — Wes Moore of Maryland, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, and Gavin Newsom of California — are expected to attend the swanky Salamander Hotel in Washington, according to the campaign.

The weekend summit marks Biden's first official in-person campaign event since declaring his candidacy on Tuesday.

The campaign is slowly beginning to take shape out of spare office space at the Democratic National Committee before it moves to Wilmington, Delaware, the president's hometown, said a person familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously in order to discuss internal dynamics.

And campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez has not started yet because she is still transitioning out of her job as White House director of intergovernmental affairs.

On Thursday night Biden held a virtual call with grassroots supporters from the White House residence, and his campaign has blasted out dozens of fundraising emails to supporters, whose smaller checks, the campaign says, are just as important as big donors.

In the 2022 midterm cycle, grassroots donors made up more than 60 per cent of the DNC's fundraising.

“One of the hallmarks of Joe Biden is that he's always enjoyed grassroots support and it has always been an essential ingredient (of his campaigns)," said Katzenberg. "To focus too much attention on the high end and the bundlers would be a mistake.”

Biden, in his remarks, was expected to touch on the themes that are undergirding his campaign, from his accomplishments in office to “MAGA Republicans” who he argues are fighting “to take away women's right to choose, ban books, and gut Social Security and Medicare,” the campaign said.

A person familiar with the event who was unauthorised to speak about it publicly said invitees all bundled at least USD 1 million for Biden's 2020 campaign. Invitations for the event went out only late last week, so some donors meeting that description were not expected to make it because of scheduling conflicts.

Some donors have groused about inconsistent outreach from Biden's White House, and the weekend summit was an effort to smooth over tensions as the reelect gets underway.

Biden's campaign has not reported how much it has raised since he formally declared his candidacy on Tuesday morning, but Katzenberg said he is “absolutely confident” the campaign will be able to top the nearly USD 1.1 billion raised for Biden's 2020 effort.