Fundraising in the 2024 Presidential Election Cycle

• In Event: Presidential Elections

Abstract

The 2024 presidential election is on pace to be the most expensive campaign cycle in American history, as well as one in which Super PACs are playing controversial central roles. Substantial early fundraising by President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, and other candidates has been accompanied by the groundbreaking reliance by candidates like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Super PACs to perform core campaign functions. Additionally, the requirement that candidates raise funds from a certain number of donors to qualify for the debate stage in the Republican nominating contest incentivized candidates to employ innovative and controversial fundraising practices. All of these developments presage an unprecedented presidential contest that is shaped in part by campaign finance rules, dynamics, and controversies.

These developments come against the backdrop of an evolving campaign finance system in which the increased prominence of Super PACs and other groups that are legally independent of but practically allied with campaigns and parties have increased the pressures on presidents and presidential candidates to devote increasing amounts of time to fundraising. Presidential campaigns have responded not only by relying on supportive Super PACS, but also by creating complex joint fundraising committees in an effort to circumvent the contribution limits mandated by campaign finance law and keep pace with well-financed non-party groups.

This paper examines presidential fundraising in the 2024 election cycle in an effort to shed light on these consequential dynamics. It advances the argument that a disjointed campaign finance system has emerged that is now far removed from the imperatives that Congress responded to when they worked to create a new campaign finance regime in 1974. These rapidly evolving dynamics have important ramifications for presidential leadership, questions of democratic will, and both proper and improper influence in our system of representative government.

Author

• Brendan J. Doherty, U.S. Naval Academy