Joe Biden’s campaign released a list of his biggest fundraisers Saturday night, the first update to the list since he won the Democratic presidential nomination.
Biden, who raised a record-shattering $383 million for his campaign and allied committees last month, named 817 “bundlers” — high-dollar donors who have tapped into their personal networks to raise at least $100,000 for the candidate, typically after giving their own maximum contribution to the Biden campaign.
The list takes in a broad slice of top Democratic officials and donors, from Wall Street executives to Silicon Valley tycoons. It includes familiar names like Hollywood film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Denise Bauer, former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium. A handful of celebrities appeared on the list, including director Lee Daniels, former “The View” host Star Jones and TV showrunner Ryan Murphy, as did several Wall Street executives, including Blackstone executive Tony James and veture capitalist Alan Patricof.
Several big names from Silicon Valley, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Ron Conway, were on the list. But a few major Democratic donors from the tech scene were absent, like Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who have poured millions of dollars into their own super PAC, called Future Forward.
Biden’s list is smaller than Hillary Clinton’s, who listed 1,129 bundlers in 2016. In 2012, former President Barack Obama’s campaign had 769 bundlers.
But Biden has outraised both of them, thanks not only to help from wealthy donors but to a record-breaking influx of online donors giving a handful of dollars at a time. That combination swept Biden past President Donald Trump, who has not disclosed his top donors and who started the campaign with a nine-figure fundraising lead over Biden. By the end of last month, Trump trailed Biden 3-to-1 in cash on hand.
Of the major Democratic candidates for president in 2020, Biden was the most reliant on big fundraising events and high-dollar bundlers to power his primary campaign, and he struggled mightily to keep up with the rest of the field’s fundraising. In December 2019, he voluntarily disclosed a list of 200 bundlers, timed with a broader discussion of campaign finance transparency driven by Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren during the clash for the Democratic nomination.
Several of his former presidential primary opponents also bundled for his campaign, often headlining events for him on Zoom, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and philanthropist Tom Steyer. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who’s separately spending millions of dollars on behalf of Biden through his super PAC, is not on the list.
More than 30 current and former members of the U.S. House also bundled for Biden, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; Val Demings (D-Fla.), who was on Biden’s list of possible vice presidential picks before the job went to Kamala Harris; and Deb Haaland (D-N.M.). Another 20 U.S. senators were also on the list of Biden bundlers.
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Organizers of the ‘I Am Change’ rally say police were trying to intimidate the large crowd from voting
What was supposed to be a peaceful march to encourage residents in Graham, North Carolina to cast their ballots on the last day of early voting Saturday resulted in a chaotic scene where police violently arrested and pepper-sprayed protesters — including children and the elderly.
About 200 demonstrators gathered for the “I Am Change” rally in which participants planned to march to a local polling station. Before heading to the polls, the demonstrators gathered for an event outside of the Alamance County Courthouse. They chose the location because of a Confederate statue that stands on the government property.
After a few speakers, however, Graham police and Alamance County sheriff officers interrupted the event and told the crowd to leave because they were blocking a roadway and causing traffic, reports WUNC. While police claim they told demonstrators they had five minutes to disperse, witnesses say they were pepper sprayed before they had a chance to move.
Peaceful protest today in Graham, North Carolina in Alamance. George Floyd & Christian Briggs family present. Children, grandparents, students pepper sprayed. Kids thrown to the ground arrested. Disgusting. Despicable. Unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/L421G6NSEQ
“Less than a minute after telling people to clear the streets, we were pepper sprayed,” participant Belle Boggs told BuzzFeed News. “There wasn’t time to clear the streets safely because of social distancing guidelines and the fact that many people were elderly or had children with them.”
The peaceful rally quickly turned into a violent scene as officers pepper sprayed the crowd, which also included young children and the elderly. One graphic video shows a Black woman in a wheelchair moving wildly before falling out of the chair due to the chemical burning her eyes.
Another participant told BuzzFeed he saw several children choking from the pepper spray. “People had to choose whether to continue to the polling station or go wash their eyes and skin,” he said.
One woman told the Raleigh News & Observer that her 5 and 11-year-old daughters were sprayed with the irritant.
Video posted online shows demonstrators were peaceful, including a Facebook Live stream. What’s more, the violent police encounter reportedly stopped most of the marchers from going to their intended destination: the polling station.
Organizers of the event say police were trying to intimidate the large crowd from voting. “It was intended to suppress the vote,” organizer and mom of three Faith Cook told journalist Sarah Ovaska.
I just talked with Faith Cook, a Graham mom of 3 who organized the rally to the polls and is now standing in line to vote. “It was intended to suppress the vote,” she said about the sheriff’s decision to stop the rally . pic.twitter.com/pXziZlBHEi
“We are fed up with this kind of treatment in Alamance County and in Graham City,” Reverend Greg Drumwright, another organizer of the event, said in a video following the incident. “Both of those law entities … colluded to suppress peaceful organizers, who were here not only to vote today, but to call an end to system oppression and racial disparages.”
Graham police said they arrested a total of eight people. The courthouse where it took place holds a historical connection to the city’s racist past. On that same courthouse square in 1870, Klansmen hanged a Black man named Wyatt Outlaw from a tree, according to records published by UNC-Chapel Hill.
Outlaw was a rising local politician who had been appointed to the town council and had been deeded land for the town’s first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Before the Klansmen dragged him from his home and lynched him, they drove through the town in an effort to intimidate African-American residents. Outlaw and others, however, scared the Klansmen away by shooting at them. The horrific lynching was an act of revenge.
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As of Saturday, nearly 92 million voters had already cast ballots nationwide
Calling Joe Biden his “brother,” Barack Obama on Saturday accused Donald Trump of failing to take the coronavirus pandemic and the presidency seriously as Democrats leaned on America’s first Black president to energize Black voters in battleground Michigan on the final weekend of the 2020 campaign.
Obama, the 44th president, and Biden, his vice president who wants to be the 46th, held drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit, predominantly Black cities where strong turnout will be essential to swing the longtime Democratic state to Biden’s column after Trump won it in 2016.
“Three days until the most important election of our lifetime — and that includes mine, which was pretty important,” said Obama, urging Democrats to get to the polls.
The memories of Trump’s win in Michigan and the rest of the Upper Midwest are still searing in the minds of many Democrats during this closing stretch before Tuesday’s election. That leaves Biden in the position of holding a consistent lead in the national polls and an advantage in most battlegrounds, including Michigan, yet still facing anxiety it could all slip away.
As of Saturday, nearly 92 million voters had already cast ballots nationwide, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Tens of millions more will vote by the time polls close on Tuesday night.
The former president hammered on Trump’s continued focus on the size of his campaign crowds.
“Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatized?” Obama said in a mocking tone. “The country’s going through a pandemic. That’s not what you’re supposed to be worrying about.”
Throughout the day, Trump and Biden, both septuagenarians, threw stinging barbs at one another that at moments verged into schoolyard taunt territory.
Speaking in Flint, Biden joked of Trump, “When you were in high school, wouldn’t you have liked to take a shot?” He also mocked the president as a “macho man.”
Trump, too, on Saturday suggested he could beat up Biden if given the chance and suggested the former vice president wears sunglasses to cover up “surgery on the eyes.”
“He’s not a big guy,” Trump said of Biden. “A slight slap, you wouldn’t have to close your fist.”
Later in Detroit, Biden ridiculed Trump for calling himself a “perfect specimen,” called him Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “puppy,” and joked about a New York Times report that showed Trump had spent $70,000 on hair care.
As Biden campaigned in Michigan, Trump made an aggressive play for pivotal Pennsylvania, focusing largely on his white, working-class base.
At an evening rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump announced that he had issued a memorandum that calls on government agencies to determine fracking’s impact on the economy and trade and the costs of banning the oil and gas extraction through fracking.
The president has repeatedly charged that Biden will end fracking — a big industry in Pennsylvania and other states — even as the former vice president has said that he does not support a ban on fracking.
“In other words, if one of these maniacs come along and they say we’re gonna end fracking, we’re gonna destroy the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Trump said in announcing his memorandum. “You can say, sorry about that.”
Earlier in the day in a small town in Bucks County on the eastern edge of the state, Trump raised baseless concerns about election fraud, pointing specifically at Philadelphia, a city whose large African American population is key to Biden’s fate in the state.
“They say you have to be very, very careful — what happens in Philadelphia,” Trump charged. “Everybody has to watch.”
Republicans are betting that Trump can win a second term by driving up turnout among his strongest supporters — white, noncollege-educated men and rural voters — while limiting Biden’s advantage with Blacks and Latinos. Democrats in several swing states worry that voters of color may not be excited enough about Biden to show up in the numbers they need.
Former President Barack Obama campaigns for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at Camping World Stadium Tuesday in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
In Michigan, Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat who represents the Flint area, said he had been pressing for a couple of months for Biden or Obama to visit the majority Black city where a water crisis that began in 2014 sickened the city’s residents, exposing stark racial inequities.
“Showing up matters,” Kildee said. “The message is important, no question about it. But there’s a message implicit in showing up, especially in Flint.”
Biden’s campaign announced it was sending Obama to Florida and Georgia on Monday. He is the campaign’s most valuable asset to help energize the nonwhite voters Democrats so badly need to defeat Trump. “Joe Biden is my brother. I love Joe Biden, and he will be a great president,” Obama said Saturday.
The press for Michigan’s Black voters comes after voting was down roughly 15% in Flint and Detroit four years ago — a combined 48,000-plus votes in a state Trump carried by about 10,700 votes. Overall, the Black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% four years earlier, according to the Pew Research Center.
Trump isn’t ceding Michigan to Biden. He visited Waterford Township, near Detroit, on Friday and held a rally in the state capital, Lansing, this past week, though the surging coronavirus cases are clouding his presidency.
The worst week of the year, in terms of new infections, arrived with Election Day looming. More than 99,000 Americans reported new infections on Friday, a record high, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Trump told Pennsylvania voters that his administration has done “an incredible job” dealing with the pandemic. He promised that the mass distribution of a vaccine was “just weeks away.” He’s been saying that since August.
Vote for equality.
Vote for the planet.
Vote for justice.
Vote for the future. https://t.co/eoxT07d7QB
Biden has focused almost exclusively on Trump’s inability to control the pandemic. “We’re gonna beat this virus and get it under control and the first step to doing that is beating Donald Trump,” Biden said.
With the campaign down to the final days, Trump’s closing sprint includes, in addition to the four stops in Pennsylvania, nearly a dozen events in the final 48 hours across states he carried in 2016.
Biden will close out his campaign on Monday in Pennsylvania, the state where he was born and the one he’s visited more than any other. The Biden team announced that the candidate, his wife, Jill, running mate Kamala Harris, and the senator’s husband, Doug Emhoff, plan to “fan out across all four corners of the state.”
Associated Press writers David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
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The Biden campaign is now shifting its focus heavily on getting Black men out to vote
Former President Barack Obama posted a video on Twitter of him shooting his shot, literally. The now viral video shows him making a 3-point shot and walking off, saying, “That’s what I do!”
The 19-second clip has garnered 2 million views and in the tweet he includes a link to IWillVote.com to encourage people to get to the polls as the presidential election on Nov. 3 draws closer.
Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden can be seen walking behind, impressed, saying, “Whoa! All net!”
The video comes as many people speculate about Biden’s ability to capture the Black male vote. Many question whether or not President Donald Trump can sway enough Black male voters to hurt Biden in key battleground states.
According to the New York Times, the Trump administration believes that it can win 20 percent of Black Men – improving from the 13 percent in the 2016 presidential election – and “Democrats are taking that serious enough to deploy Obama.”
New: Trump campaign thinks it can win 20% of Black men (got 13% in 16). And Dems are taking it seriously enough to deploy Obama. Why some Black men back Trump, and why it's not enough to swing election on its own. Reporting w/ @NYTnickc@michpoligalhttps://t.co/VorONJnrn6
“The outreach is vital for Democrats, who lost the three industrial states in 2016 partly because of diminished support from Black voters. They worry that not enough Black men will cast ballots – or that Trump might make enough marginal gains to help in close races,” the article states.
There are some Black men who identify w/ Trump's gender politics and nativism. Younger Black men are also less driven by party ID, representation. Also true: the vast majority of Black men will back Biden, likely more than any group that's not Black womenhttps://t.co/ukeAFlgK82
The Biden campaign is now shifting its focus heavily on getting Black men out to vote by having Biden and Obama campaigning together for the first time this year in both Detroit and Flint, Michigan.
Obama was also deployed in Philadelphia, where Hillary Clinton “had strong but not surging support from Black voters in 2016.”
Astead W. Herndon, an NYT reporter, posted a series of tweets saying that even if Trump experiences an “uptick” among Black Men, “a bigger turnout helps Biden at margins. Black men are a high class electoral problem for Biden to have in short term, but is a sign of something Dems will have to wrestle with long term.”
The New York Times spoke to more than two dozen Black men in battleground states such as Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, who described voting rationales as “complex web of race, gender, and socioeconomic status – with policy concerns like health care, immigration and the coronavirus pandemic.”
Responses varied from Marco Bisbee of Michigan who attended a Trump rally in Lansing with his 13-year-old son. He originally voted for Clinton in 2016: “We’ve been voting for Democrats for 50 and 60 years and no progress. Y’all had eight years of a Black man as president – he ain’t give you what you need.”
Todd Holden of Philadelphia chose to vote against Trump and is drawn to Biden’s plan on climate change: “Biden and Harris have a huge climate change platform which is big. From 2016, up until this point, it’s seemed almost like a mission to roll back everything Obama has done with the environment.”
Darren Mosley of Detroit says that Democrats made reaching young voters difficult by nominating someone in his seventies.
“We need some young blood. Look at the age of the senators and people in office. They don’t have young minds. We need younger thinking so we can move forward and keep young voters encouraged.”
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In addition, last Wednesday, Walt Disney World laid off 720 actors and singers
Walt Disney World may be the place where dreams come true, but sadly, the iconic theme park is letting go of 11,350 workers in Orlando due to financial struggles amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Walt Disney World Resort marked its 45th anniversary on October 1, 2016 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. (Photo by Jacqueline Nell/Disneyland Resort via Getty Images)
According to USA Today, Jim Bowden, Disney’s vice president of employee relations said in a notice that was filed on Thursday that at the end of year, 10,903 workers at Walt Disney World and 447 employees from smaller Disney properties will be affected.
In addition, last Wednesday, Walt Disney World laid off 720 actors and singers, according to the Actor’s Equity Association, a labor union that represents the artists. This will now leave 60 Equity performers to work at the Orlando theme park.
Disney won’t answer my questions because it has no good answers for why it spent its emergency fund handing out billions of dollars to wealthy executives and shareholders, and then left workers holding the bag. https://t.co/hzW8k7gXSs
Kate Shindle, president of the Actors’ Equity Association voiced her support to those affected.
“Our hearts go out to all the cast members at Walt Disney World,” Shindle said. “Disney has made it clear that our members would face work reductions since they announced layoffs of nearly 28,000 employees. That does not make this news any less painful.”
Disney World made an attempt to reopen in July after a three-month shutdown due to COVID-19 guidelines. An October 9 article from The New York Times reported that attendance has been “lower than anticipated” since its reopening.
In a Disney Parks blog post on Friday, Bettina Buckley, vice president of Walt Disney World Resort Live Entertainment, on behalf of the company, addressed the layoffs as “difficult decisions.”
“Determining which shows can return and when is a complex process. As with the rest of our phased reopening, we will also consider the guidance of health officials and government agencies in determining when the time will be right to adjust capacity, and as soon as it is appropriate, we will start to bring additional entertainment back,” Buckley said.
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