Former President Joe Biden hopes to raise at least $200 million to build his presidential library, but his erstwhile heavy backers are hanging onto their cash, NBC News reported Friday.
NBC interviewed “more than half a dozen people who were once major Biden donors or bundlers.” Most “said they harbored no ill will toward Biden himself but either wouldn’t give to the library or would give only a token amount.”
“I don’t believe a library will ever be built unless it’s a bookmobile from the old days,” Florida-based personal-injury attorney John Morgan, described by NBC as “a longtime Biden devotee,” told the network.
Morgan, for his part, said he wanted “an $800,000 refund,” referring to the amount of money he raised for Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign. That cash was transferred to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ hastily assembled presidential campaign after Biden dropped out of the race.
What do Morgan and other Democratic donors have to show for their contributions? Precious little, Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Nikki Fried told NBC:
This ecosystem, the last cycle, raised more money than probably has ever been raised, and we don’t have Congress, we don’t have the White House, and we don’t have additional powers at the state level. And so there’s a real conversation happening about where we go from here and how do we do things differently, and donors on the national level are holding back dollars until they have a game plan.
“I don’t know if the donors will be ready to give dollars … to a library when we’ve got real issues to focus on today,” she said.
One “prominent donor with close ties to Biden” told NBC that, if asked, he might give a “token” amount for Biden’s library, but that would be it.
“With everything that’s going on in our country right now,” he explained, “there are so many important things that need to be funded.”
Between his age and his health, Biden himself is in no condition to raise library funds. “Couple that with the perception that [the party’s] woes rest with his decision to seek a second term,” averred Morgan, “and we have the Hindenburg heading straight towards us.”
Oh, the humanity!
Biden’s closest advisors may not be much more helpful. According to NBC, “Some [donors] cited personal interactions with Biden’s inner circle as being so distasteful they believed it would be a barrier to ever raising significant funds for” his library.
A source told NBC Biden’s team is looking to raise $200 million to $300 million for the library. That’s a far cry from the $850 million former President Barack Obama’s library, now under construction in Chicago, is set to cost, but it’s going to be tough sledding even to reach Biden’s comparatively modest goal. (A cynic might observe that, combined, these two men who claim to care so much about the poor are planning to spend over $1 billion — of other people’s money, as usual — on monuments to themselves.)
“I’d like him [Biden] to have some nice library,” another donor told NBC. “I just don’t see that’s where I’m going to spend my money.”
Still another, “a Biden bundler and onetime administration official,” asked by NBC if he planned to contribute to his ex-boss’ library, answered simply, “Me? No way.”
Besides getting no electoral returns on their 2024 investments, many of the donors felt as if they were ignored except when Biden needed more money. “They said they were tapped time and again to write checks but then couldn’t get a phone call returned, with some blaming a close-knit circle for isolating the president — only for contributors to later find out he was showing signs of mental decline,” wrote NBC.
The network reported that one donor
said he sees the library effort, which he has not yet been contacted about, as a difficult one for Biden because the former president’s base of committed donors is small. Biden started with a small set of fundraising heavyweights, did not hand out many plum posts to top givers and was not good at making his donors feel appreciated, this person said. Biden’s age figures to make the raising effort even harder.
The person characterized the obstacles ahead.
“I don’t think ‘hill’ is the proper term,” he said. “It’s going to be much steeper than that.”
Biden appears not to have considered the need to bankroll his library while he was in office and thus at the peak of his fundraising ability. Penned NBC:
[Democratic National Committee fundraising chairman Chris] Korge said early on he had more than once personally urged Biden and his team to focus on raising money for a library and to perhaps put aside ambitions to seek a second term.
“I did tell them that if Biden didn’t run [in 2024] he would go out as a hero, and he could focus the last two years of his term on setting himself up to raise a lot of money for the library,” Korge said.
Korge also blamed President Donald Trump’s “vindictive[ness]” for Biden’s current fundraising woes.
Another former Biden fundraiser cited Democrats’ navel-gazing over their electoral defeats as a contributing factor. Biden, he or she said, “deserves a foundation and library museum.”
But, when queried as to whether he or she would contribute if asked, the person replied, “I don’t know.”