Hillary Clinton's super PAC raised $9.3 million in July
WASHINGTON — Priorities USA Action, the leading super PAC backing Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said it collected nearly $9.3 million last month and began August with more than $38 million in available cash to continue its advertising barrage against her Republican rival Donald Trump.
Priorities’ July haul is a drop from the $11.9 million the group raised in June. In all, Priorities has raised more than $110 million during the election cycle, including nearly $1 million through a joint fundraising arrangement with EMILY’s List, which backs female candidates.
And officials say Democratic donors have pledged another $44 million.
Clinton and outside groups supporting her have dominated the airwaves since the general-election campaign kicked off in early June, spending a combined $104 million to promote the former secretary of State and to blister Trump, according to data compiled by NBC News.
Priorities alone has underwritten about $43 million of the television ads aiding Clinton.
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Trump and his allies are playing catch-up.
On Friday, the Republican began airing his first ads of the general election, spending $4.8 million on commercials that will run in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida, key battlegrounds where Trump needs to close the gap with Clinton.
The first Trump ad, called “Two Americas: Immigration,” paints an image of a country overrun by rule-breaking immigrants during a Clinton presidency and argues Trump will make “America safe again”
Trump releases first general election ad, focused on immigration
Team Clinton’s ads have sought to use Trump’s harsh rhetoric about women and his call for ban on Muslims entering the United States to cast him as unfit for the White House.
In a statement Saturday, Priorities’ chief strategist Guy Cecil echoed that theme.
“Never before has there been a candidate as uniquely unsuited for the presidency as Donald Trump,” Cecil said. “His divisive and dangerous temperament and character was demonstrated again recently when he suggested Hillary Clinton be shot and blamed President Obama for founding ISIS.”
“Now we see that he’s getting serious about attacking Hillary on TV, dropping $5 million on a recent ad that continues his shameful campaign of pitting Americans against each other,” he added. “Now more than ever we must not let up in our efforts to ensure he never becomes president.”
Top donors to Priorities in July included Slim-Fast founder Daniel Abraham and financier Donald Sussman. Each gave $3 million, according to the group's filing Saturday afternoon with the Federal Election Commission.
Presidential candidates, parties and many outside groups were slated to file reports Saturday that detail their July fundraising and spending.
Two pro-Trump groups reported raising a total of more than $4 million. Great America PAC, collected $2.47 million in July, much of it from small donors. Its biggest donation: $100,000 from Charles Johnson, a billionaire owner of the San Francisco Giants. Johnson had backed Jeb Bush’s unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Another super PAC in the Trump orbit, Make America No. 1, raised a little more than $2 million, almost all of it funded by hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer.
Early campaign-finance reports rolling in Saturday also show:
It’s all about the Senate for some donors
Some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors have shunned the Republican nominee and instead are plowing money into helping imperiled congressional incumbents.
Paul Singer, a hedge-fund billionaire who has been one the party’s largest benefactors, donated a total of $2 million last month to two groups focused on preserving the Republican majority in the Senate: the Senate Leadership Fund and Freedom Partners Action Fund, a super PAC aligned with industrialist Charles Koch.
The Senate Majority Fund, a super PAC focused on seizing control of the Senate for Democrats, had its best fundraising month of the election, collecting $7.3 million in July. Its seven-figure donors included Thomas Murphy, the father of Rep. Patrick Murphy, a Democrat vying to face Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in November.
The senior Murphy gave the group $1 million on July 13.
Billionaires are big-time players in 2016
For instance, George Soros, the billionaire financier who spent more than $24 million in the 2004 election trying to defeat President George W. Bush, has returned to electoral politics in a big way in this election.
Saturday’s filings show Soros giving $500,000 to the Senate Majority PAC. He also gave $1.5 million to Planned Parenthood's political arm last month.
Through the end of June, he already had contributed more than $13 million in this election cycle, much of it to the pro-Clinton Priorities USA and several other groups aligned with Democrats, a USA TODAY tally shows.
Other billionaires are directing money to their own super PACs.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican-turned-Independent who endorsed Clinton during a high-profile speech during last month’s Democratic National Convention, plowed another $5 million into his Independence USA PAC in July. His group has worked to elect candidates who share his stance on gun control.
Retired hedge-fund manager and prominent Democratic environmental activist Tom Steyer, added another $7 million into his NextGen Climate Action Committee, bringing to $25 million the amount he has donated to the group so far this year.
NextGen, in turn, gave $5 million last month to For Our Future, a labor-aligned group working with Steyer to help elect Clinton to the White House and Democrats to Congress.
Contributing: Christopher Schnaars