Elizabeth Warren reveals unintimidating $6 million Q1 fundraising haul

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is turning out to be a big spender on the campaign trail — but it's unclear if that's paying off.

The 2020 candidate revealed her first-quarter fundraising haul on Wednesday, sharing in an email to supporters that she'd pulled in $6 million from 135,000 donors. That total isn't too hefty when compared with more mainstream and even underdog rivals — and Warren isn't exactly stashing it all for a rainy day, either.

Warren's Q1 total comes in at about a third of funds raised by frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who reported last week that he'd raked in $18 million from 525,000 individual donors over the same time period. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who's slightly ahead of Warren in most polls, said she got $12 million from 218,000 people. Warren's total doesn't even look great in comparison to once-longshot candidate Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who said he's gotten $7 million from an undisclosed number of donors.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

Warren has already spent $4.6 million, or 85 percent, of her Q1 earnings, which Politico notes means she's "spending like a front-runner but isn't yet raising money like one." Still, she has an additional $10.4 million in the bank after transferring unused Senate election funds to her presidential election stash. That's a sizable war chest for a candidate who reportedly lost her finance director because he didn't like her small-money donation commitment.