Sen. Sanders Takes Early 2020 Fundraising Lead with $18.2M
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Bernie Sanders' first quarter 2020 fundraising report is in. The Sanders campaign saying it brought in an $18.2 million. Nearly a third of that money came in on his very first day in the race. The money being added to $28 million Sanders has from holdover accounts. The Sanders campaign announcements following the reporting Senator Kamala Harris, she announced overnight that her campaign hauled in about $12 million. South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg was the first to project $7 million. CNN's Ryan Nobles who follows the senators' campaign joins our conversation. It's a big number. We don't know Beto O'Rourke yet so Sanders will either be the top or probably second in the fundraising. What's their take on this?</s>RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: I mean, any way you slice it, $18.2 million is a lot of money to do a lot of things. But if you based it on their own expectations and what they've been telling their supporters, they never give us dollar figures, they always talk about the number of contributors that they get to sign up for his campaign. And they've been touting a goal of a million different individual contributions, they only got about 900,000. Still an impressive number, and then when you drill down those numbers even further, it was only about 525,000 individual contributors. And that's really what the Sanders campaign is all about. They're about that grassroots support. They average around $20 a donation this time around. So it's a big number. Maybe not quite as much as Bernie Sanders and his team was hoping for, but it's going to give them a lot of resources to play in some of these big states like California and Nevada even if they don't do well in those first two early states.</s>KING: All right. So in a crowded field, it may not be, you know, maybe not as even their own expectations, maybe they're going to say, oh, they could have done better, he's Bernie Sanders, he ran last time. In this crowded field, that's a lot of money and that proved some people thought it was just because he was running against Hillary Clinton, there's not going to be the second time around, it's not going to work. This guy is a force in the race from beginning to whenever.</s>OLIVIER KNOX, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, SIRIUSXM: As a Vermonter, I've been saying for a long time I know that he looks like a rumpled tenured professor. He is one of the most organized politicians I've ever seen. In 2016 they had better social media penetration than the Obama White House did in some sectors. They're very organized. This is how they do it. It's interesting to watch Beto in part because Beto most self- consciously modeled his fundraising operation on Bernie's, not the freaked out crazy ex-e-mails from the DCCC like the sky falling but the come with me and build a thing.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.</s>KNOX: And so it's going to be very interesting to see whether Beto just picked up because he was facing Cruz or whether this is the model for the future.</s>KING: All right. The early Beto numbers proved that -- there are a lot of people say, oh, there are just people really giving against Ted Cruz</s>LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Right. This is an entirely new way of fundraising that's taken hold since 2016 obviously. As you mentioned, Bernie Sanders was kind of at the forefront of it. But also, what I find interesting is the social media presence is Olivier you mentioned, Beto and Warren are also really strong competitors with Sanders in that arena. They've been trying to really push aggressively on those fronts. They also are kind of competing with each other when it comes to the amount of events that they're holding to -- to really be there and be present on the campaign trail. Notably, we've mentioned that O'Rourke doesn't have a day job the way the other candidates do. So he can be out there as much as he wants, as often as he wants. And you may find these other senators starting to miss votes earlier than we previously expected.</s>KING: It's a great point, and the numbers we're getting. The reports aren't due for another -- almost two weeks. I think two weeks from yesterday. The numbers we're getting are from the people who think they have a little chest pounding to do. If you don't have great numbers then you wait until the end, then you try to take a little time to spend your numbers. Amy Klobuchar among those being honest saying, look, I'm not going to keep up with Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke, but I'll be fine.</s>SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't expect to have as much money as my opponents. I've always said that. I always know that. Every race I've run the first time I've had significantly less money than my opponents but I've still won. And I've done it by doing it the right way, by reaching out so people can meet me and ask questions, and I'm going to continue to do that. We will have enough money to win.</s>KING: The key for those candidates as you get the first debates this summer, she's already qualified for the debates through her polling position, and then you try -- you can you do it through fundraising as well. If you're in the debates, maybe you're not the highest fundraiser through June but if you have some debate moments then you go viral, that's one we'll get another reset if you will.</s>SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: And that's why you're just -- I'm curious to see like how the different candidates gain traction. I'm particularly interested in the senators who haven't raised their fundraising totals yet. I think Kirsten Gillibrand is one person who according to polling and just sort of the coverage hasn't kind of had that big moment yet. Even her official campaign launch last week was overshadowed by the fact that the summary of the Mueller investigation was coming out that same day. I thought it's interesting that her campaign this morning was touting the number of personal events that she's had in Iowa, and using that metric while a lot of other people are talking about their fundraising numbers.</s>KING: We shall see again. Raise some money, get to the debates and see what happens. Up next, what does the most powerful woman in Congress think of the controversy surrounding former Vice President Joe Biden?