O’Rourke brought in $6,136,736 after declaring his long-anticipated bid with a web video and trip to Iowa on Thursday morning, raising the sum entirely online and from all 50 states, the campaign said.
He narrowly beat the first-day haul of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who raised $5.9 million after announcing his bid last month and who would go on to raise $10 million before his first week was over.
O’Rourke’s early burst of fundraising illustrates how much he has captured the imagination of many Democratic activists around the country, who propelled him to break financial records last year in his ultimately losing bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. There were some doubts as to whether those same grassroots donors would also contribute to him when he was not facing Cruz — a detested figure by the left — but rather was one more entrant in a sprawling presidential primary.
O’Rourke’s money will, at least for now, quiet some of those skeptics: In a single day online, he raised nearly a quarter of what Barack Obama, then a senator, did in the entire first quarter of 2007.
Now the question is whether he can sustain that level of support. Sanders raised his first $10 million quickly in February, much of it in small contributions. There is no way to independently confirm either candidate’s initial contributions. O’Rourke, Sanders and the rest of the presidential hopefuls must file fundraising reports at the end of March. Those first-quarter filings will be made public April 15.
Few other candidates trumpeted their initial financial success, in part because they knew that Sanders would tap into his loyal network of support from his 2016 presidential race and post a large figure. The campaign of Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., however, did say she raised $1.5 million in the first day after announcing her candidacy in January.
O’Rourke’s aides would not say what their average contribution was or how many total donors contributed within the first 24 hours of his bid. As in his Senate race, he did not accept any money from political action committees.
After announcing his candidacy, O’Rourke spent three days in Iowa, focusing on counties President Donald Trump carried in 2016, before heading to Wisconsin, part of a multistate Midwestern tour.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.