Democrats struggle to find campaign funding

Politico:

Months of bleak polling couldn’t stop the parade of lower-level Democrats crowding into the presidential primary.

But bankruptcy might.

Eleven Democratic presidential candidates — nearly half of the sprawling field — spent more campaign cash than they raised in the second quarter of the year, according to new financial disclosures filed Monday. Eight contenders active in the spring limped forward with less than $1 million in cash on hand, and several top-tier contenders were already spending multiples of what their lower-profile competitors raised.

The financial squeeze is set to drastically shrink the lineup of Democratic contenders in the coming months, barring major shifts in momentum, as candidates grapple with the doldrums of summer fundraising and the high costs of staffing national campaigns and building donor lists big enough to qualify for future Democratic National Committee debates. The numbers also reveal the tremendous pressure on lesser-known candidates to make a splash in the debates at the end of this month — potentially the last chance some will have to attract a burst of support as their expenses pile up.

“This is the doomsday scenario for a lot of campaigns, where they’re grasping for air to keep their campaigns alive and to live another day,” said Andrew Feldman, a Democratic strategist in Washington. “You can’t build an organization. You can’t build an operation that turns enthusiasm into votes without having resources to do it.”

The disclosures show a yawning gap growing between the Democratic primary’s five front-runners — who combined to rake in about $100 million — and a collection of rivals increasingly struggling to get by, thanks to combinations of low fundraising, relatively high expenses and little money built up in previous years or fundraising quarters.
...

The huge field is also stripping Democrats of potential funding for the race against Trump.