Mr. Trump’s campaign and the RNC are paying the best employees significantly higher wages than the Biden and Democrats campaign. More than 20 of Trump’s campaign aides and RNC officials receive a higher salary than Biden’s campaign manager, for example. Mr. Parscale is paid more opaquely, with monthly payments of $ 47,797 to Parscale Strategy LLC, quadrupling what Mrs. O’Malley Dillon received.
The highest-paid officials were party leaders, and there was a gap there, too: Ronna McDaniel, the RNC president, received more than $ 24,000 in May; Mr. Pérez received less than $ 16,000. (“A woman in the same position is earning more because she is hitting her male counterpart by almost every metric,” said Michael Ahrens, a RNC spokesperson.)
In May, Trump spent $ 470,925 on surveys, including $ 98,000 at the John McLaughlin firm. McLaughlin wrote a memo this month titled “Biased Media Surveys,” which criticized polls showing Trump lost the election, and the memo was recently posted on Twitter by the president. In contrast, Mr. Biden’s campaign spent only $ 122,300 on surveys. (The RNC spent another $ 2.5 million that was listed as “voting / consulting services” last month, which a party official said covered its voter data operation; the DNC listed zero voting expenses.)
The Trump campaign and the Republican Party also spent far more on legal fees ($ 1.55 million to $ 875,000) than Biden and the Democrats in May.
One of the biggest changes to the cash race is that Mr. Biden’s campaign now regularly has multi-million dollar fundraisers, in part because the contribution limits for the alleged nominee and the party are more than 200 times higher than during the primary. In June, Mr. Biden raised a combined $ 21.6 million from just six of the largest donor virtual fundraisers he has ever had.
And while Mr. Biden had to compete with the next generation of Democratic talent during his elementary career, he can now tap into his networks, particularly those seen as his running mate.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts held an event with Mr. Biden this month that raised $ 6 million in one night, the campaign’s largest fundraiser. Unlike the Obama event, Warren relied on some of the top contributors. A few days earlier, Senator Kamala Harris of California organized an event that raised $ 3.5 million; Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico helped organize another event that, according to an organizer, raised $ 1.7 million; and Susan Rice, the former United Nations ambassador, led a fundraiser last week that Biden did not attend.
