New campaign finance disclosures filed late Thursday and early Friday shed fresh light on how big money, big donors and big expectations shaped the final stretch of the 2024 presidential race.
The 2024 cycle was set to be the most expensive election on record, and the candidate that raises the most money usually wins the election.
That didn’t happen in the 2024 presidential race, even as President Biden and Vice President Harris’s campaign raised more money than any other presidential ticket in history.
That’s at least in part because President-elect Trump outsourced his canvassing operation to super PACs funded by wealthy allies, including several billionaires who have been selected to serve in his incoming administration.
Musk spent a quarter of a billion dollars boosting Trump since July
Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect the incoming president since he endorsed Trump in July following an assassination attempt.
New filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show Musk gave a total of $238.5 million to his pro-Trump super PAC, America PAC, which led the charge to turn out voters in battleground states.
Recent filings also revealed a combined $23.5 million he contributed to two other super PACs supporting Trump.
Super PACs, unlike campaigns, can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. While they are legally not allowed to coordinate with campaigns, the FEC this spring relaxed coordination rules on canvassing specifically in response to a request brought by a Democratic committee.
Trump took a gamble on outsourcing his ground game to super PACs including America PAC. It not only appears to have paid off for him, but also for Musk, who will co-lead his Department of Government Efficiency effort to cut federal spending and reduce the size of the federal government.
The Elon Musk Revocable Trust also gave $20.5 million on Oct. 25 to RBG PAC, a “pop up” super PAC that spent nearly that much on digital media defending Trump’s abortion stance in battleground states.
The super PAC, which appears to reference the late Supreme Court Justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, formed on Oct. 16, the day final reports were due to the FEC before the election. Because of the timing of its formation and the donation, the source of the money being spent by RBG PAC was not made public until 30 days after the election.
Ginsburg’s granddaughter Clara Spera previously publicly condemned the “appalling” ads, telling the Washington Post that RBG PAC “has no connection to the Ginsburg family and is an affront to my late grandmother’s legacy.”
New filings also show Musk donated $3 million to the MAHA Alliance, a super PAC that ran ads in swing states urging supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to support Trump. Kennedy dropped out of the presidential race in August and endorsed Trump, and MAHA is a reference to his “Make America Healthy Again” tagline.
Several Trump administration picks cut big checks to super PAC
Musk isn’t the only wealthy individual who spent big to boost Trump in the 2024 election, with many snagging key posts in the incoming administration.
Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick to lead the Commerce Department and the CEO of the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, made a nearly $3 million “in-kind” donations of stock to the primary pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc. (MAGA Inc.), according to its Thursday evening filing with the FEC.
That’s in addition to the combined $6 million Lutnick has contributed to MAGA Inc. between December 2023 and August 2024, according to FEC records.
Several other billionaire Trump administration nominees donated more than $1 million to MAGA Inc. throughout the 2024 election cycle, including Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent, the founder of the Key Square Group investment firm who donated a total of $1 million; former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who gave nearly $2 million and was tapped by Trump to serve as administrator of the Small Business Administration; and Linda McMahon, Trump’s education secretary pick, who donated nearly $20.3 million
Harris campaign reports no debt amid scrutiny
In the aftermath of a disappointing election for Democrats, Harris’s campaign quickly received scrutiny over how her campaign blew through more than a $1 billion only to lose all seven battleground states.
News outlets noted that her campaign appeared to be in debt, which her campaign insisted it was not.
As of Nov. 25, the Harris campaign reported $0 in debts and obligations, as did her joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee, the Harris Victory Fund.
While the Harris campaign came under fire for potential debt as an intraparty blame game broke out, it’s not uncommon for presidential candidates to have debt after an election.
Trump’s own campaign reported nearly $11.4 million in debts and obligations to the FEC as of Nov. 25. His unsuccessful 2020 campaign reported more than $11.3 million in debts and obligations after the election.
The primary pro-Harris super PAC Future Forward, however, reported $47 million in debts and obligations as of Nov. 25. An aide to the super PAC told the New York Times that the large debt was due to an accounting issue with invoice timing.
MAGA Inc., on the other hand, had $0 in debts and obligations.
Money doesn’t always win
The Harris campaign reported raising nearly $1.2 billion as of Nov. 25, blowing past President Biden’s record-breaking 2020 haul of nearly $1.1 billion through the same period.
Around $312.3 million of the 2024 total was raised through the end of June, just before Biden left the ticket following his disastrous debate performance and endorsed Harris as his successor. The campaign reported just $1.8 million on hand as of Nov. 25.
The Trump campaign raised $477.1 million during the 2024 election and still had nearly $9.9 million in cash on hand as of Nov. 25, according to an FEC report filed Thursday.
His campaign spent $462.4 million throughout the 2024 election, an astronomical sum that was nevertheless dwarfed by the Harris campaign’s spending.
The fallout from Harris’s loss and her campaign spending — which included an eyebrow-raising $1 million payment to Oprah Winfrey’s production company — rankled some within the Democratic ranks.
Her loss kicked off a Democratic reckoning that is searching for answers about who or what was ultimately responsible for the party’s loss during the 2024 election.
After Trump was declared the winner, Democratic National Committee (DNC) official Lindy Li took to cable news to declare Harris’s White House bid a “$1 billion disaster” and that donors were “misled” about her ability to actually win.
Political polls showed the race within the margin of error, and Harris raised enormous sums of money when she took over at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Her entrance seemed to re-energize the base, though Harris had enormous task ahead of her: reintroducing herself to millions of Americans just years after running in the 2020 presidential primary and persuading voters to choose her within a matter of months.
Democrats concede now that they have a brand and messaging problem, as voters ranked the economy as the second most important issue (32 percent) after democracy (34 percent), according to CNN exit polling.
Scrutiny over how the Harris campaign managed its finances comes just less than two months before members of the party pick their next DNC chair.
