Tulsi Gabbard Sets Record In Her Latest Campaign Finance Report
But the Hawaii congresswoman still isn’t close to the amounts being raised by frontrunners in the 2020 presidential race.
WASHINGTON — Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s presidential campaign says it raised $3.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to .
That figure, if true, would mark Gabbard’s best quarterly fundraising haul since announcing her bid for the White House in early 2019.
Still, it’s far behind some of the more well-known candidates in the field, such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign says he raised $34.5 million in the fourth quarter, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who says he pulled in $24.7 million.
Because candidates don’t have to file their fundraising paperwork with the Federal Election Commission it’s not clear where Gabbard’s money is coming from.
If past performance is any indication, the congresswoman will have raised much of the money through small dollar donations.
The numbers should also reflect any boost she received after a high profile fight with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who described Gabbard in an October interview as a “favorite of the Russians” and someone who was being groomed as a third-party candidate.
The spat appeared to result in in Gabbard’s poll numbers.
The congresswoman also recently made headlines when she voted “present” when the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump.
Gabbard’s vote was widely panned as an attention-seeking political maneuver. Former Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who served for nearly 20 years in Congress, called on her to resign.
This is the first time Gabbard’s campaign has released its total fundraising figures before the FEC’s filing deadline.
The congresswoman nearly $4.5 million in the first quarter of 2019, but a significant portion of that money — about $2.5 million — was transferred from her congressional campaign account. She raised $1.5 million and $3 million in the second and third quarters of 2019.
Gabbard barely registers in national polls, averaging per the website Real Clear Politics. She does better in the early primary state of New Hampshire, where Real Clear Politics pegs her polling average at .
Gabbard spends a lot of time and money in New Hampshire, and recently moved there in an effort to bolster her campaign’s ground game.
The congresswoman failed to meet the Democratic National Committee’s polling threshold to participate in the December debate and appears to be a long shot to qualify for the January contest in Iowa.
Gabbard says she will not seek re-election to the House, where she represents Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District that encompasses rural Oahu and the neighbor islands.
