On Monday, Donald Trump’s campaign was asking fans to send $5 or $10 to buy pizza and snacks for election-day volunteers. He’s ending his campaign against Hillary Clinton the way he began it: heavily outspent by his opponent.
Trump can’t blame his financial disadvantage on a lack of wealthy supporters. Some of them promised that big money was coming, but never followed through. And as of Sunday, even Trump himself hadn’t spent nearly as much on his own campaign as he promised.
Overall, Clinton and her allies raised more than $1 billion through Oct. 19, the last date for which comprehensive figures are available, compared with about half that for Trump and his allies. Support from super-political action committees, which can accept donations of unlimited size, was particularly lopsided in Clinton’s favor.
If Trump wins the election today, he’ll have millions of middle-class fans to thank for financing most of his campaign -- people who sent $35 over the Internet in response to his daily entreaties, and helped him smash the Republican record for small-donor fundraising. If he loses, these are some of the deep-pocketed supporters who didn’t come through for him:
1. Sheldon Adelson. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported the Las Vegas casino mogul offered to spend as much as $100 million on Trump. Trump and his team occasionally bragged about the offer. Adelson and his wife actually spent at least $10 million on Trump, and possibly more -- but nowhere near $100 million.
2. Carl Icahn. The billionaire investor made a video praising Trump last year, and told Bloomberg News in August that he was considering forming a super-PAC to support the campaign. He didn’t.
3. Tom Barrack. The real-estate investor and close friend of Trump’s appeared on CNN in June, claiming he’d raised $32 million for a new pro-Trump super-PAC. Then Barrack abruptly distanced himself from the group, and didn’t give it a cent. It’s on track to spend about $20 million.
4. Trump. In recent weeks, he pledged again and again to put $100 million into his campaign. So far, he hasn’t. His actual giving, as of Sunday, stood at $66 million. At this point, it’s probably too late for a last-minute cash infusion to have any impact.
‘He Choked’
Trump’s failure to live up to his own promise is particularly surprising, because he’s repeated the $100 million pledge so frequently and so recently.