California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has built a fundraising effort that mirrors those of presidential candidates, as Democrats begin to wonder whether they should drop the aging, legally vulnerable incumbent President Joe Biden from the 2024 election ticket.
A year ago, Newsom told the White House that he would not run in 2024 — at least not to challenge Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is from his home state of California and his home city of San Francisco. But circumstances have changed.
Biden’s age is showing; his polls are dismal, despite positive economic signs; and he may even face an impeachment inquiry as evidence emerges that he was part of a lucrative influence-peddling scheme using his son as a go-between to foreign businesses.
That could lead Democrats to look for alternatives, and Newsom building a national operation. The Sacramento Bee reports:
Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking fundraising steps often used by potential presidential candidates, setting up multiple committees that in their first three months have raised and spent millions of dollars.
The three Newsom-affiliated committees are a political action committee, which limits contributions to $5,000 a year and can donate to individual candidates; a SuperPAC, which can raise unlimited amounts of cash but is restricted from promoting a specific candidate, and a joint fundraising committee, which functions like a bank, mostly collecting and distributing funds to the other groups.
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Forming the trio of fundraising committees allows prospective candidates like Newsom to begin building a base of support and explore a run for federal office without saying it outright, according to Brendan Glavin, senior data analyst at Open Secrets.
If he wants to jump into the race, or if Biden steps aside, Newsom would face tight deadlines: as Breitbart News has noted, time is running out to qualify for the primary ballots. But Democrats could also find a way, as they have in the past, to make a late switch.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
