Julian Castro raises $800,000 in 10-day span to stay in presidential race

[TexasTowelie]

by Alex Samuels, Texas Tribune


Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro announced Friday morning he hit his self-imposed $800,000 fundraising goal, giving him the resources he says he needs to keep his campaign alive — and to try to qualify for the next two debates.

The announcement came after a rush to raise money that began Oct. 21. Days after his latest fundraising report showed he had less than $700,000 in the bank, Castro sent a plea to supporters asking them to help him raise the money by midnight Halloween, or he’d drop his White House bid.

“Time and time again this campaign has defied expectations with the support of an army of dedicated, grassroots supporters,” campaign manager Maya Rupert said in a statement. “We set an extremely ambitious goal to keep Secretary Castro’s voice in this race, and our supporters met the challenge and delivered one of the best months of the campaign to date.”

The campaign said it received more than $1 million during the month of October from nearly 50,000 donors and had the best fundraising day of the campaign since August on Thursday. With the money solidified, Castro’s campaign said it plans to make a push for the November and December Democratic primary debates — a lofty goal for a campaign that has been mired in low single digits in polls since entering the race in January.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/11/01/julian-castro-raises-800000-presidential-race-2020/

[democratisphere]

1. THIS is going nowhere.

Low single digit candidates need to close up shop and let the clear front runners go on.

[TexasTowelie]

6. +1

[BlueMTexpat]

2. He may pick up more

supporters now that Beto is officially out of the race.

[pinkstarburst]

3. Not so sure

I'm not sure how much crossover there is between Beto supporters and Julian Castro supporters. Beto is beloved in Texas for what he did in 2018, getting out the vote, helping to flip lots of down ballot races over to blue, nearly defeating Cruz. Castro polls low in Texas for a reason. He chose to sit out in 2018 when many people wanted him or his brother to run for governor. I wouldn't count on him picking up any of Beto's followers.

And IMHO the lowest tier candidates whose campaigns are clearly running on fumes aren't doing the party any favors when they drain more money from the donor base for a candidacy that clearly won't lead to being on the ticket. We're dividing donations too many ways, and we're going to need people to still want to donate and be enthusiastic about it by the time we have a nominee.

[dalton99a]

5. +1. Castro didn't lift a finger to help Democrats last year

while Beto was working his ass off getting out the votes and raising funds for Democrats

[TexasTowelie]

7. I doubt it.

After Castro attacked Beto in the first debate most of us scratched Castro off of our list. There were also plenty of people that were upset with Castro attacking Biden. Castro's campaign is going nowhere, but nobody is calling for Castro to withdraw and run for Senate.

[pinkstarburst]

8. +1

[Skidmore]

4. I thought he'd dropped out. nt

[nsd]

9. Postponing the inevitable.

It would have been better if he had fallen short, freeing his staff to look for other jobs and his supporters to look at other candidates.

Everybody's human, but at some point you have to be realistic and realize that dreams don't necessarily become reality.