It’s Gabbard’s Home Turf, But Sanders Is Raising More Money From Hawaii Donors
The Hawaii congresswoman is second and President Donald Trump comes in third, but many of his contributions are too small to be tallied.
WASHINGTON 鈥 Turns out the people of Hawaii are still feeling the Bern.
Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont, so far has raised more money from the Aloha State than any other Democrat vying for the chance to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.
Sanders even outraised presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. congresswoman from Hawaii.
鈥淏ernie Sanders and his team have the machinery in place to do this,鈥 said Todd Belt,聽 a professor at George Washington University and director of the school鈥檚 political management program.
鈥淐ertainly, Tulsi Gabbard has her supporters, but what she has pales in comparison to both the sophistication and size of the operation Bernie Sanders has.鈥
According to Federal Election Commission data from the Center for Public Integrity, Sanders received nearly $199,000 in contributions from Hawaii donors between Jan. 1 and June 30.
Gabbard, meanwhile, raised more than $152,000 in that same span.
That鈥檚 enough to place them No. 1 and 2 among their Democratic peers in the presidential field.
The numbers were compiled by combining itemized contributions 鈥 those over $200 that are required by the FEC to be publicly disclosed by candidates 鈥 with data from ActBlue, which is the mechanism used by most Democratic candidates to collect small-dollar donations.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the data includes about 94% of all individual contributions made to candidates.
The financial support for Sanders shouldn鈥檛 be too surprising.
The senator won Hawaii鈥檚 presidential preference poll in 2016, beating out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose the general election to Trump despite winning the popular vote.
Nationwide, Sanders is also one of the in the Democratic field, having received more than in contributions for his presidential campaign, combined with more than $10 million he transferred over from his previous campaigns.
Gabbard, meanwhile, has struggled to stay relevant, both financially and in the polls.
The congresswoman has raised $3.5 million so far for her presidential campaign. She transferred an additional $2.5 million to her presidential campaign from her congressional account.
An analysis of the data that combines names with zip codes also shows there鈥檚 significant crossover between Sanders and Gabbard donors. An estimated 31,000 people across the country have donated to both campaigns.
There also appears to be a significant amount of donor crossover between the campaigns of U.S. senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, as well as Sanders and Warren.
Close to 60,000 donors gave to both Harris and Warren, about the same number as gave to both Sanders and Warren. Donors giving to Sanders and Harris added up significantly less, about 19,000.
Gabbard donors also seem to like Mike Gravel, the former U.S. senator from Alaska who, like Gabbard, presents himself as an anti-war candidate. He is second only to Sanders among the candidates who received money from Gabbard donors. About 9,000 people gave to both.
Gravel has since dropped out of the race and endorsed Sanders for president. He also said Gabbard鈥檚 run for president or vice president.
Kauai resident Janice Bond is one of those donors who sent money to both Sanders and Gabbard鈥檚 presidential campaigns.
In 2016, she said, she worked with Sanders鈥 Hawaii operation as a member of the Kauai Democratic Party. She also remembers the first time she met Gabbard, when she was running for Congress in 2012.
Bond recalls picking up Gabbard at the airport and taking her to Hanapepe to meet with voters.
When a crying woman approached Gabbard after the event, Bond said she was struck by how the future congresswoman locked eyes and listened to every word despite a growing line of people waiting to meet her.
鈥淚 feel that she is one of the better candidates especially if you鈥檙e talking about wanting a female president,鈥 Bond said. 鈥淪he鈥檚 sincere, she鈥檚 very conscious about her words and about how she presents herself.鈥
If Gabbard wants to pick up more support in her home state, Bond said, she might want to pay closer attention to the issues in her district. Bond pointed specifically to Native Hawaiian protests on Mauna Kea over construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.
Gabbard has not visited the mountain since the protests began.
Instead, she has participated in protests in Puerto Rico and travelled to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota where in 2016 she stood alongside protestors when they fought against the construction of an oil pipeline.
鈥淪he鈥檚 been going all over the mainland states, but I think she needs to come home to her base here to activate them,鈥 Bond said.
Gabbard鈥檚 campaign did not respond to a Civil Beat request for comment.
There鈥檚 still a black box surrounding small dollar donations to Republicans who don鈥檛 yet use a contribution conduit, such as ActBlue, on a large scale. That鈥檚 why it can be hard to see exactly how much money is coming out of Hawaii into Trump鈥檚 campaign coffers.
According to FEC data, Hawaii residents donated more than $95,000 to the president鈥檚 2020 re-election campaign.
But that figure is likely an undercount of the money he’s getting from Hawaii.
Trump has raised millions of dollars from small-dollar donors throughout the U.S., many of whom are allowed to remain anonymous because they did not contribute more than $200 to the campaign, the threshold that requires their identities to be disclosed.
And while Trump is beating most of the presidential field among Hawaii donors, his reported haul is still only a fraction of the more than $762,000 raised by the 2020 Democrat field as a whole.
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About the Author
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Nick Grube is a reporter for Civil Beat. You can reach him by email at nick@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at . You can also reach him by phone at 808-377-0246.