by Daveda Gruber:
As time goes on, the group of presidential runners for the Democratic nomination is slowly shrinking. The next person to be stepping out of the race will most likely be the man who had a Spartacus moment earlier this year.
Senator Cory Booker’s D-NJ., campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, sent out a memo to staffers that warned that Booker must raise an additional $1.7 million by the end of the third quarter of fundraising, which is only 10 days away. If this can’t be done, Booker’s campaign will not have a “legitimate long-term path forward.”
Two sources have allegedly explained that the memo was leaked to NBC News and for good reason. There is now an ongoing effort to spark a rise in fundraising over the next ten days.
Booker tweeted this:
We’re at a crossroads in this campaign. We need to raise $1.7 million by September 30 to be in a position to build the organization we need to compete for the nomination—and we can do it—but if we don’t, we don’t see a legitimate long-term path forward.
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) September 21, 2019
On Saturday morning a campaign memo was sent to political reporters.
The memo reads, “This isn’t an end-of-quarter stunt or another one of those memos from a campaign trying to spin the press. This is a real, unvarnished look under the hood of our operation at a level of transparency unprecedented in modern presidential campaigns.”
Booker had built an intimidating operation in the early voting primary and caucus states. Large staff on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other early voting states is rather expensive to maintain.
Demissie has warned that while the campaign can continue at its current size and strength, it does need more funding if it wants to expand to what it needs to be.
Demissie wrote in the memo, “If our campaign is not in a financial position to grow, he’s not going to continue to consume resources and attention that can be used to focus on beating Donald Trump, which needs to be everyone’s first priority.”
Booker launched his run for president early in February and qualified for the third and fourth round Democratic presidential primary debates.
The New Jersey Senator raised 4.5 million in the April-June second quarter of fundraising. That many sound like a lot but it actually is far behind former Vice President, Joe Biden; Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders; Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren; and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
But Booker has also struggled in polling. He averages in the low to mid-single digits, which is far behind the top-tier contenders who are former Vice President Joe Biden and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
From what I see, one of these top three will be the Democratic nominee.
