Exclusive: Concern over Biden's stance on Israel-Hamas war rattles high-profile campaign donors

WASHINGTON ? President Joe Biden's reelection team touted the success of their celebrity-filled fundraiser in New York City last week to the tune of $26 million. But some former donors who served on his finance committee told USA TODAY they are withholding their dollars.

Two prominent donors said they skipped the March 28 fundraiser held at Radio City Music Hall ? which was headlined by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton? in protest of Israel's war in the Gaza Strip.

One donor, who was also a high-level former official in the Obama administration and has helped raise north of $5 million for the party, described it as 'morally wrong' to join the campaign staff, donate or volunteer until the Biden administration changes course on its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"The president and vice president feign sadness while continuing to supply Israel with weapons and money to carry out the indiscriminate murder of Palestinians," the donor, who asked for anonymity in order to speak freely, told USA TODAY.

The influential Democrat, said there is enough time for those disturbed by the staggering humanitarian crisis in the Gaza to further pressure the president to shift course, including putting strict conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel when there are human rights violations.

Biden and Harris have "damaged American credibility" said the donor, who added that the killing of civilians in Gaza funded by "our tax dollars and weapons can't be normalized as merely the price of good things like universal health care, climate resilience or a strong economy."

Another donor, political activist and philanthropist, Amed Khan, quit Biden's Victory Fund National Finance Committee last fall over the president's handling of the Gaza war.

Khan, who has spoken out publicly before, told USA TODAY he knew the U.S. would overwhelmingly back Israel forcing his hand on the issue.

"I very quickly understood sometime in October that the United States would give Israel carte blanche, to conduct a war," Khan said in a phone interview Friday with USA TODAY from Egypt. "And so I don't want any part of that."

The reluctance shared by these Democratic givers and other ex-Obama staffers who served on Biden's 2020 election campaign, underscores how the grassroots Gaza cease-fire now movement, led largely by college-aged activists, has persuaded many within the party's ideological orbit. And while the Biden campaign continues to build its war chest at historic levels, what these donors expressed is part of a larger trend in the country. Slipping support for Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza threatens to unravel the Democratic coalition at a time when the president wants to coalesce the party.

Tory Gavito, co-founder of Way to Win, a national network of progressive-minded givers that has raked in more than $300 million since 2018, said she expects many donors who have Gaza at the forefront of their minds will continue to hold back support for the president's campaign.

"The war in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis and the continued capture of the hostages from Oct. 7, is an ongoing humanitarian crisis," she said.

"And leading up to the State of the Union address there were a number of activists and donors doing what they could to insist upon the Biden-Harris administration making some move to work towards peace in the region."

Donors upset over 'ignorant arrogance' on Gaza

Another donor, a top bundler ? a person who donates and helps raise money ? who has raked in millions since 2018 for Democratic candidates, said they also skipped the Radio City Hall fundraiser because of Gaza and Biden's policy on the Middle East.

The bundler, who spoke anonymously to speak freely, has had numerous meetings with Biden administration officials but believes the concerns raised have been ignored because of the White House's "ignorant arrogance on Middle East policy."

The bundler, who has helped organize Arab-American supporters in the past, said donors had multiple meetings on the campaign with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and heard them say they would have “principled foreign policy toward the Middle East with human rights at the center.”

But after what they described as "gross human rights violations by Israel" in Gaza and America’s inaction, they said they could not approach the donors.

In response to USA TODAY's request for comment, the Biden campaign said the Israel-Hamas war has not been a significant barrier to fundraising efforts.

"While it's hard to predict the future in an active conflict, the Biden-Harris campaign adviser said, "we have continued to see very strong grassroots fundraising growth."

No longer limited to confrontational street demonstrations or "uncommitted" voter protests at the ballot box, the movement's underpinnings have expanded into the upper echelons of the Democratic Party and its donor class.

This could spell trouble for the Biden campaign, especially as former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, holds the lead in six swing states ? Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina ? on a test ballot that includes third-party and independent candidates, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll released April 2.

The donor, who was also a former Obama staffer and worked on Biden's election campaign, predicted the concerns would affect field operations in certain places as "young voters and Black folks" seem less excited.

"When folks have reached out about the issue (or when it has come up) I do privately explain that I am unable to help, donate until policy changes. I've also been asked to offer guidance to stakeholders who are very upset about our policy, and I obviously do let them know that I cannot offer a defense of administration policy on Israel/Gaza," the donor said.

"Many of us have also helped the 'leave it blank; and 'uncommitted' campaigns ? all of this is in service of getting the administration to change policy," they said.

However, the donors, both of whom served on Biden's finance committee in 2020, said they were not actively organizing or dissuading others from contributing.

A ‘bright red line’ for Biden, Dems

It's not just donors.

The unified front, on display at the NYC fundraiser with the three presidents, is beginning to show chinks in the armor. Some ex-Obama staffers including one who served on the Biden-Harris transition team, have stopped putting in any effort into Biden's reelection campaign.

Democrats have become increasingly critical of how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prosecuting the war, which started after terrorists killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages last October.

More than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Beyond the death toll, a March 18 U.N. report said a famine is "imminent" and humanitarian groups estimate more than 2 million people are threatened with famine.

A Gallup survey released March 27, a day before the Biden campaign’s fundraiser, showed 55% of all Americans disapprove of Israel’s military action. That includes 75% of Democrats, which is up from the 63% who said the same last November.

Many prominent figures decidedly outside left-leaning activist circles have begun to denounce the U.S. ally, particularly in the wake of an Israeli airstrike this week that reportedly killed seven humanitarian aid workers, including one American, working for the nonprofit group World Central Kitchen.

“The murder of seven heroic World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza should be a bright red line,” Democratic strategist David Axelrod, a former senior Obama adviser and sometimes Biden critic, said in an April 3 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"Israel has the right to defend itself against barbaric acts of terrorism, not to indiscriminately kill innocents or valiant men and women who are working to save them from starvation."

Biden, who also expressed outrage over the airstrike, has faced increased scrutiny from both the American public and members of his own party over his stance toward Gaza.

Nearly half of American voters, 45%, believe Biden should pressure Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, an exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll shows.

Views that Biden should do more to help the Palestinians are more widespread among Democrats (69%) and those who identify as independent/other (49%). Just 18% of Republicans share that belief.

But Evelyn Farkas, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration, defended Biden's actions in an interview with USA Today.

During the last Gaza conflict in 2021, she said, the president's policy was to embrace Israel publicly but apply pressure privately. Of late, the Biden administration appears to be willing to be more public with its pressure, she said.

“Which is the right approach,” Farkas said. “It’s just that it came a little later in the process and it has yet to achieve its full effect because Netanyahu has a lot at stake here. He has every reason to want to drag out this conflict.”

Biden rolling in money but donors having 2016 flashbacks

As the Gaza debate continues to divide Democrats, some are having flashbacks of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign with the prospect of disenchanted voters torpedoing the president’s reelection efforts.

"The primary is a time to have kind of a protest vote and a kind of a rearranging, but this year, that just feels dangerous to me. I wish there was no possible way to split the vote," Dawn Evans Greenberg, who attended the Radio City Music Hall fundraiser in New York City, said in an interview with USA TODAY.

A mother of two college-age children, Greenberg, who worked on Clinton's presidential election campaign, said she hears the echoes of 2016, where a faction of the Democratic Party remained unenthusiastic about the candidate, heralding the Trump presidency.

Whatever misgivings some deep-pocketed Democrats have with the Biden administration's Gaza policy, the president continues to haul in large sums of money.

The president's reelection effort raked in more than $26 million at the New York City gala last month, according to campaign officials.

Biden raised $21.3 million in February, nearly double the $10.9 million raised by the Trump campaign that month, according to March 20 filings with the Federal Election Commission.

On Saturday, the Biden campaign announced together with the Democratic National Committee it had raised more than $90 million in March.

In 2020, Biden's campaign had more than 750 bundlers, and it is impossible to know how many of them will choose to be inactive based on the Gaza issue.

Way to Win, which has urged Biden to change course on Gaza, warned in a February memo to its members about the roughly 13% of Michigan Democrats who voted "uncommitted" in the primary. The group reminded supporters about how the Great Lake States was pivotal to Trump's win eight years ago.

"Folks may be concerned about the speed at which Biden has made shifts on the Gaza conflict, but they are consolidating their resources to defeat Trump, whether that's an outside group or Senate campaigns or their state party," said Gavito, of Way to Win.

She said there will be donors that are going to hold back giving from Biden's campaign, just as there will be activists who are going to continue to speak out.

But objections over Gaza do not appear to have put a dent in the president's war chest thus far.

"I have seen money shifting from donors who agree with wanting to keep our democracy whole is coming in and consolidating behind Biden," Gavito said. "So, I don't know that it's affecting his fundraising numbers."

Pressure builds for Biden to change course on Israel and Gaza

That does not faze a former staffer who served on the Biden-Harris transition team.

The staffer, who served in the previous Democratic administration for six years as well as on the Biden-Harris transition team in 2020, said they felt betrayed by their former boss (Obama) and the Biden administration.

"We are not the ones responsible for letting Trump win," they said. "Our job as voters is to hold the candidates accountable and it's their job to assuage our concerns."

When demonstrators entered the Radio City Music Hall event chanting "blood on your hands," Obama responded, saying to the group: "You can’t just talk and not listen. That's what the other side does."

Asking the protestors at the Radio City Music Hall to listen was the ultimate "gaslighting," the former Obama staffer said.

"That was the most hypocritical statement he could make seven months into this, because we all gave Biden the chance, we listened to him his first few months," the staffer said. "The Biden administration is applying empty public pressure. There's no conditionality tied to it."

And that's the sentiment that has now permeated to donors.

On foreign policy toward the Middle East, the Biden and Trump administrations are basically the same, the Arab American donor and bundler that spoke to USA TODAY said.

“Biden just says the right things about human rights, democracy and rule of law, but what gets implemented is the same terrible post 9/11 security-crazed policies,” said the donor who served on the National Finance Committee for the Biden’s re-election.

“I had no credibility to go back to the donors that had already donated very generously in the past, say ' Hey, please donate some more to a man that is killing your people.'”

The things that could change the donor’s current stance would be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a serious and concrete conversation about personnel changes during a Biden second term.

Betty Cotton, a longtime donor to Democratic candidates, who was at the NYC fundraiser with the three presidents, said while she was sympathetic to civilian deaths in Gaza and devastated by the death of the aid workers of the World Central Kitchen, an organization she supports, she said Hamas bears responsibility for starting the war.

“Israel is a sovereign state and a democracy whereas Hamas is a globally recognized terrorist organization funded by Iran whose main goal is to kill Jews and destroy Israel,” she said.

Cotton said while there are major challenges regarding the war, third party candidates and disinformation exist she was confident in the Biden campaign and how it was being run across the country, especially in the battleground states.

“The stakes in this election are huge.”

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal. Phillip M. Bailey is chief political correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @phillipmbailey.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden's Israel stance and Gaza suffering rattle campaign donors