US President Joe Biden will be locked in a series of political fundraising events through the end of June to bolster the early stages of his 2024 re-election campaign.
Biden will be at four events this week in the city of San Francisco, a heavily Democratic stronghold on the West Coast and long a source of campaign cash for the party’s national leaders.
In total, the president is planning 20 fundraisers over the next two weeks, about half of which he will host, while First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, will speak at the remaining events.
Biden announced his re-election campaign in April but has had relatively few overtly political events since then, though he continues to fly regularly from Washington to key political battlegrounds across the country to promote new spending on infrastructure, computer chip manufacturing and climate control that Congress passed during the first two years of his presidency.
In addition to San Francisco, Biden also plans to appear at fundraisers in New York, Maryland and Illinois, all Democratic strongholds. Labor unions endorsed Biden over the weekend in Pennsylvania, a traditional political battleground.
“We have done a lot of things,” Biden said last week. “We just have to let a lot of people know that we’ve done it and be honest with people. Let’s be as direct as we can.”
The timing of the fundraiser coincides with the end of the second quarter of the year, a deadline by which US politicians must report the amount of money they have raised and reveal a list of top donors.
Biden, who has only limited opposition to seek a second four-year term in the White House, is trying to build political momentum while 10 or more Republican presidential candidates are in the early stages of their campaigns for the nomination. of the party
Republicans are planning their first debate in August, but how many candidates will be able to participate is an open question, and all candidates will face minimum voting and fundraising requirements imposed by the national GOP to get to the stage.
Former President Donald Trump, according to national polls, is easily the Republican favorite for the 2024 nomination, roughly 30 percentage points ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and with an even bigger lead over a host of other candidates with a 5 % in surveys or less.
Trump’s opponents include his vice president, Mike Pence, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott, and former governors Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson.
Despite his lead in the polls among Republicans, Trump’s race to regain the White House is complicated by two criminal indictments he faces, one in New York related to payments to an adult film star and federal charges related to his handling of classified documents when he left office in 2021.
In addition, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith continues to investigate Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, while a state attorney in the southern state of Georgia investigates Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat there.
[Con información de AP]
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