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Donald Trump on Fund-Raising: ‘I’d Like Support,’ but Can Go It Alone Donald Trump Hints He May Fund Race Himself
(about 5 hours later)
Donald J. Trump shrugged off concerns about his meager fund-raising totals on Tuesday, expressing confidence that he could inject his presidential campaign with as much cash as needed and hitting his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as a big-spending politician who is beholden to Wall Street. In Las Vegas last week, Donald J. Trump’s Nevada headquarters stood dark. A sign taped to the door declared that it had moved, with “no forwarding information available.”
The comments came hours after campaign finance filings showed that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign war chest dwarfs that of the Manhattan businessman by more than $40 million. His cash on hand total was a paltry $1.3 million, which Mr. Trump attributed to lingering reluctance among Republicans to rally around his candidacy. On a weekday morning in New Hampshire, another battleground state in November, a single worker hovered in Mr. Trump’s main office in Manchester.
“It would be nice to have some help from the party,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Today” show. “I’d like to see great support. If I don’t have great support I’ll go a different route.” And at the hub of his national campaign in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has cloistered himself with a tiny group of relatives and longtime business associates, relying on a staff of about six dozen people to win over an electorate of more than 120 million.
The different direction would be self-funding his general election bid, as Mr. Trump did, to a certain extent, during the primary campaign. Even as Mr. Trump continues to dominate the campaign on cable news and social media, drawing large crowds with incendiary speeches about immigration and national security, his candidacy has faltered in an all-important test of organizational discipline.
“I have a lot of cash and I may do that in the general election,” he said. Having swept through the Republican primaries and caucuses with a skeletal campaign staff and a budget funded largely out of his bank account, Mr. Trump must now compete against Hillary Clinton, his presumptive Democratic opponent, with only a shadow of the financial and political infrastructure she has amassed.
Still, Mr. Trump defended his fund-raising prowess and said that he collected $12 million for the Republican Party’s coffers during a series of events over the weekend. Despite those efforts, Mr. Trump lamented that he was not getting more support from his own side. In crucial states, his campaign offices have withered. He has not yet put out a single television ad in the general election. He has about as much money on hand for his campaign as the Manhattan district attorney and the New York City comptroller each disclosed having in their last reports.
“I’m having more difficulty, frankly, with some of the people in the party than I am with some of the Democrats,” he said. “They don’t want to come on. They will probably eventually come on. If they don’t, I’ll be fine either way.” The situation has grown so dire for Mr. Trump that on Tuesday, he suggested that he might tap his personal fortune to keep the campaign afloat. He disclosed on Monday that his campaign finished May with little more than $1 million in the bank. Mrs. Clinton reported having about $42 million.
Mr. Trump also suggested that fund-raising is less important for him because of the unusual nature of his candidacy. Drawing on the experience of his primary campaign, in which his opponents outspent him and lost, Mr. Trump said it would not require $1 billion to beat Mrs. Clinton. In a defiant statement, Mr. Trump said that he was just getting started as a competitor against Mrs. Clinton, and that there had been a “tremendous outpouring of support” from donors since the beginning of June. But he has mused publicly in recent days about funding the race himself, and on Tuesday opened the door wider to that possibility.
“Politicians are the only ones who can spend a billion dollars,” Mr. Trump said in a separate interview on Fox News. “Hillary Clinton will spend a billion dollars of Wall Street money and the money from the Middle East.” “If need be, there could be unlimited ‘cash on hand’ as I would put up my own money, as I have already done through the primaries, spending over $50 million,” he said.
Even the stark disparity in cash on hand may understate the desperate straits in which Mr. Trump finds himself. His fund-raising, led largely by the Republican National Committee, has slowed. He canceled a fund-raiser with 90 people in Boston last week, after the shooting in Orlando, Fla.; it has been rescheduled for June 29.
Mr. Trump is to be feted at two fund-raisers in Manhattan this week, organized by Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, with one event featuring Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. But the ticket price for that event is only $500, a paltry sum for a presidential campaign, and only 260 people have signed up, according to a person involved in Mr. Trump’s fund-raising, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was not intended for the public.
Charles Spies, a Republican election lawyer who advised Jeb Bush’s “super PAC,” said Mr. Trump would have to put in an enormous amount of his own money to jump-start his campaign and win over big donors. He suggested an appropriate figure would be $100 million to $200 million.
Mr. Spies said Mr. Trump should also forgive the loans he had made to his campaign, to reassure contributors that he would not use their money to repay himself.
“For donors to invest in his campaign, he’s got to show that he’s investing in it also,” Mr. Spies said. “He’s got to have $500 million to run a bare-bones campaign, and that would mean getting outspent by Hillary Clinton and her allies, between 2 and 3 to 1.”
Dwight Schar, a former finance chairman of the R.N.C., said Mr. Trump’s grim predicament came as little surprise. Mr. Trump never courted party donors during the primary season and accused them of seeking to buy influence in government, boasting that as a wealthy man he would be immune to their entreaties.
“I think Mr. Trump has got all the money, so he doesn’t need any financing,” said Mr. Schar, who said he was undecided about whether to back Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton. He added, “I think my mother used to say, What you sow, you reap.”
Mr. Trump has reported that his net worth is about $10 billion, though it is unclear how much is in cash, or could readily be converted to cash, that could be used for a presidential campaign.
Mr. Trump’s advisers spent much of Tuesday morning huddled at Trump Tower to discuss the way forward, including a speech he has planned for Wednesday attacking Mrs. Clinton. The address, advisers said, will be the first of several speeches Mr. Trump plans to give, with the goal of regaining traction in the race.
Mr. Trump’s knack for commanding news media attention, however, is no substitute for a campaign organization. Mrs. Clinton’s staff is larger than Mr. Trump’s by nearly tenfold, and her stable of advisers includes the polling and advertising firms that steered President Obama’s campaigns.
Mr. Trump’s campaign, by contrast, rolled from state to state during the Republican primaries, building pop-up operations as needed, but left few resources behind that he could now draw upon in the general election.
In New Hampshire, for example, Stephen Stepanek, a state lawmaker who helped steer Mr. Trump’s primary campaign, said there was catching up to do in the state. He predicted there would be 30 or 40 paid staff members in New Hampshire by July.
“Trump ran a very tight campaign, and we’re very well aware of that,” Mr. Stepanek said. “After we got through with the primary in New Hampshire, the entire staff moved on to the next primary state. They’re all drifting back now.”
In New York, Mr. Trump has kept a tight circle of advisers and leaned heavily on familiar faces, including his children; Michael Cohen, his longtime lawyer; and Paul Manafort, a veteran Republican operative with business ties to Mr. Trump that date to the 1980s.
He has only the thinnest of communications operations, relying on Hope Hicks, a former spokeswoman for his daughter, Ivanka, to handle the avalanche of daily news media requests.
And Mr. Trump has struggled to expand his operation, facing cold shoulders and arch skepticism from strategists with deep campaign experience. He has sought to hire a communications director, but has been rebuffed by at least two seasoned operatives who were concerned that working for Mr. Trump could harm their careers, according to Republicans briefed on the hiring efforts.
He has recently recruited the pollsters Tony Fabrizio and John McLaughlin, as well as a strategist, Kevin Kellems, to oversee the activities of his campaign surrogates.
But he has also shed staff, and late last month dismissed a recently hired political director, Rick Wiley, whom he viewed as insufficiently tough in negotiations with the Republican National Committee.
On Monday, Mr. Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, tearing another hole in the architecture of his campaign. Mr. Lewandowski was a close adviser to Mr. Trump, but was viewed with distrust by national party leaders, other Trump advisers and members of the Trump family.
The Trump campaign is said to favor hiring a new campaign manager to play a more conventional role, focused on ensuring that basic functions of the organization work together smoothly.
There was no one lined up for the job at the time of Mr. Lewandowski’s dismissal.