http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/us/politics/donald-trump-fundraising-gop.html?_r=2Donald Trump, Chasing Campaign Cash, Veers From Battleground StatesBy MAGGIE HABERMAN
JUNE 16, 2016
Donald J. Trump’s campaign schedule is being driven by his fund-raising needs, prompting him to appear in heavily Republican states like Georgia and Texas and diverting his attention from battlegrounds where Hillary Clinton is spending her time.
Mr. Trump’s aides, scrambling to raise money to compete against Mrs. Clinton’s cash juggernaut and extensive donor network, have scheduled fund-raisers in places like Georgia, North Carolina and Texas this week. The private events for donors were often scheduled first, followed by his campaign rallies, according to two people involved in Mr. Trump’s fund-raising who insisted on anonymity.
Even some of Mr. Trump’s appearances in battleground states have been tied to fund-raisers: A New Hampshire rally on Monday night was planned in conjunction with a fund-raiser in Boston, but both events were canceled after the deadly shooting in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday.
Mr. Trump has informed people raising money for his campaign that he is not interested in traveling to states for donor events unless there is a rally scheduled as well, according to the people involved. Those rallies have often garnered Mr. Trump national cable news coverage, the type of news media attention that fueled his primary campaign.
But the result for now has been that Mr. Trump is campaigning in states where he has far less risk of being defeated by Mrs. Clinton than states that are likely to be competitive, like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, Rust Belt states with large numbers of the white working-class voters who have been most receptive to Mr. Trump’s message.
“A travel schedule driven by fund-raising needs that takes you away from battleground states is one that’s full of missed opportunities,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist and former Mitt Romney adviser.
With Mr. Trump in the South, Mrs. Clinton has been spending her week in Ohio and Virginia, two of the most crucial states for winning the presidency. She was also in Pennsylvania, another state where Mr. Trump’s brand of populism could be effective, but where he has spent little time since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee.
Mr. Madden noted that Mr. Trump was uniquely able to generate national television coverage and newspaper headlines wherever he happened to be. “But he needs to flip states like Colorado, Ohio, Virginia and Florida in order to win,” he added. “I’d rather be driving national coverage from those locales than not.”
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is also beginning an advertising blitz in battleground states this week, on top of commercials that have already been run in those places by the “super PAC” supporting her, Priorities USA.
Mr. Trump remains confident that he can flout conventional campaign practice by relying on a small staff and heavy news coverage. But even so, and despite his reliance on assistance from the Republican National Committee, his campaign faces heavy potential costs for television advertising, polling and building operations in key states.
Raising money to pay for those items through the campaign is difficult: Donors may give no more than $5,400 a person through the party convention in July. After that, they are limited to donating $2,700.
At this point in the presidential cycle in 2012, Mr. Romney was raising more than $1 million a day for himself and the party . There is no indication that Mr. Trump is approaching that pace.
Moreover, while Mr. Trump lent his campaign more than $43 million in the primaries, he has shown little inclination to self-finance his general election campaign in a large-scale way.
Yet many Republican fund-raisers have openly questioned why they would donate their money to a candidate who has claimed a net worth of $10 billion.Snip
