Biden campaign rakes in $12 million on Harris' debate day

Joe Biden's campaign hauled in more than $12 million on Wednesday around the vice presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, marking another watershed cash day for the already flush Democratic presidential ticket.

A Biden campaign official confirmed the one-day total, another boon to the Biden campaign that’s seen huge financial success around recent major events. Earlier this month, Biden brought in nearly $10 million in three hours around the first presidential debate against President Donald Trump alone, breaking the campaign’s single-hour fundraising record.

Harris already demonstrated she can be a major fundraising driver for the Biden campaign, helping the ticket dip into pockets of money that had previously been less enthusiastic about Biden and driving online engagement. In the 48 hours after Biden named the California senator as his running mate, the campaign raised $48 million, averaging $1 million an hour.

Put together, these surges are part of an overall trend that has seen Biden, riding a wave of support from Democratic donors giving small amounts online, overtake President Donald Trump in fundraising and campaign spending in recent months. The Democrat recently eclipsed the president in terms of total cash in the bank, and the Biden campaign has used that edge to outspend the Trump campaign on paid advertising on TV and other platforms.

It’s a surprising role reversal for the two campaigns, as Trump started the spring with an enormous money advantage, while Biden emerged nearly broke from the Democratic primary contest.

So far, neither presidential campaign has released September fundraising numbers. But a person familiar with Biden's total confirmed to POLITICO that it will surpass that of his August total, when the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee and affiliated fundraising committees raised a record-breaking $365 million in a single month.

Even the infamous rogue fly that landed on Pence's head turned into a money machine for the Biden campaign on Wednesday night. After the wayward insect stirred intense attention online, Biden’s campaign reacted quickly, buying the website domain “flywillvote.com,” which redirected to its “I Will Vote” voter registration site.

That page, which is funded by the Democratic National Committee, saw some of its strongest web traffic to date, leading to 18,000 vote-by-mail applications over the past 24 hours. By Thursday, the campaign had already sold out of its newly branded “truth over flies” fly swatter. A Biden campaign confirmed that they had sold 35,000 of them at $10 a pop.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about whether it would release fundraising totals associated with Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate. The Trump campaign also did not share their totals from the first debate.