As much as most of us hate to admit, money plays a very big role in the potential of a campaign to do well. It’s never a guarantee; some huge fundraising candidates have failed miserably while some with limited funds have flourished. Lest we forget, the most money ever raised by a non-presidential candidate was Francis Beta O’Rourke’s failed senatorial campaign.
But money still plays a major role, which is why a lot of attention is being paid to the amounts raised by Republicans running for president. Here’s an article by Mary Lou Masters at Daily Caller News Foundation with the details followed by my commentary about the three things that surprised me…
Here’s How Much Campaign Cash 2024 GOP Candidates Have Going Into The Next Fundraising Quarter
- Presidential candidates filed their second quarter fundraising totals with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Saturday, providing a glimpse into the financial strength of the Republican 2024 hopefuls.
- While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reported more total receipts than former President Donald Trump, the former president ended Q2 with more cash on hand, followed by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, according to the FEC filings.
- “The most important number is cash on hand, minus debt,” Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist, previously told The New York Times. “You see how much financial firepower they actually have.”
Presidential candidates filed their second quarter totals on Saturday, which provided a glimpse into how much hard cash the 2024 GOP hopefuls have heading into the third fundraising period.
Candidates had until the end of day Saturday to file their Q2 totals with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump reporting the highest receipts among the crowded field of GOP contenders. The cash on hand totals provided a clearer picture as to how many hard dollars the respective campaigns have going into the fall, and indicated South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott sits just behind the former president, according to the FEC filings.
“The most important number is cash on hand, minus debt,” Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist, previously told The New York Times. “You see how much financial firepower they actually have.”
The former president’s campaign previously announced a total of $35 million combined with his joint fundraising committee, Save America PAC. Trump’s campaign raised $17.7 million during his campaign’s third fundraising quarter, but reported over $22 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing.
The candidates’ second quarter fundraising totals aren’t fully known, as super PACs aligned with the presidential candidates have until the end of the month to report their Q2 totals. The total of individual contributors are also not included in the candidates’ second quarter filings, which is a crucial factor in making the debate stage in August by meeting the Republican National Committee’s 40,000 unique donor threshold.
Scott’s campaign brought in nearly $6 million in his first quarter as a presidential candidate and followed Trump’s haul with over $21 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. The senator’s campaign, combined with Trust In The Mission PAC, previously reported raising approximately $25.4 million during Q2.
DeSantis’ campaign raked in over $20 million since his late May campaign launch and ended the second quarter with $12.2 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. Super PAC Never Back Down previously announced that, combined with the campaign, the governor had mounted $150 million.
Conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy raised $7.7 million and ended his second quarter as a presidential candidate with $9 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley brought in $5.3 million during the second quarter of her campaign and will enter the third quarter with nearly $7 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. Haley’s campaign, combined with aligned super PAC SFA Fund Inc., previously announced they raised $26 million during Q2.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum raised $11.7 million since his early June presidential launch and ended the second quarter with approximately $3.7 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. The governor gave his own campaign approximately $10.2 million and raised $1.5 million from outside contributors.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie brought in $1.65 million since his early June campaign launch and has $1.59 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing.
Former Vice President Mike Pence garnered nearly $1.2 million since launching his campaign in early June and he ended the second fundraising quarter with nearly $1.1 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. Pence and super PAC Committed to America previously reported to raise a combined $3.85 million during his first fundraising quarter.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez raised just under $1 million since his mid-June presidential launch and reported $898,850 cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. Suarez previously announced that his campaign and aligned super PACs garnered $13.6 million in the second quarter.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson raised just $582,521 since his early April campaign launch and has $378,677 cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd garnered $273,512 during the first few weeks of his presidential campaign and ended the second quarter with $245,118 cash on hand, the filing showed.
Conservative radio personality Larry Elder brought in $15,603 since his late April presidential announcement and reported $9,171 cash on hand, according to his filing.
President Joe Biden raked in approximately $19.87 million during the first quarter of his reelection campaign and ended it with $20 million cash on hand, according to the FEC filing. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raised nearly $6.4 million and Marianne Williamson raised just under $1 million, and their campaigns reported $4.5 million and $104,990 cash on hand, respectively, the documents show.
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Three Surprises
There isn’t a lot to question here. Most of what we’re seeing is pretty predictable. Donald Trump’s supporters love him enough to donate. Asa Hutchinson doesn’t have the name recognition to get enough money to be taken seriously. Joe Biden is using the left’s donation-filtering-scam to fill his coffers. All expected.
Here’s what I didn’t expect…
- Mike Pence Is Barely Ahead of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: It’s no secret that I don’t like Mike Pence and I’m glad to see him having troubles, but I had no idea how many other people agree with me. $1.2 million is pitiful, and while some may point out he declared late, so did Francis Suarez who’s barely behind him.
- Ron DeSantis Is PAC Driven: This shouldn’t have been a surprise to me if I had been paying closer attention. It was announced that he had raised $150 million and sadly I didn’t pay attention to the story. Now that I see only $20 million came to his campaign directly, it’s far less impressive that he raised so much from mega-donors to his PAC. Don’t get me wrong. $20 million is still very impressive, but it’s not like he’s blowing away the competition with small donors. He’s being propped up heavily by his PAC, which isn’t a good sign for his prospects.
- Vivek Ramaswamy Is the Dark Horse: I would argue that there’s Donald Trump, and then there are the “backup” candidates in case Democrats and the Deep State can somehow get Trump out of the race. What surprises me is that Ramaswamy is raising so much money… and eyebrows. And he’s doing it without attacking Trump. Considering two years ago Republicans hadn’t heard of him, it’s amazing that he’s doing better than known players like Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, and the aforementioned Pence.
The nomination seems to be Trump’s unless he’s artificially knocked out. There’s still a lot of time for things to change but it appears the rest of the candidates are either vying for a cabinet position or hoping that legal manipulation by Democrats can compel Trump to leave the race.
What do you think? Sound off on my Substack.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
