A super-political action committee backing Hillary Clinton for U.S. president collected $2.5 million in the past three months -- 47 percent more than it raised in the first quarter of the year.
The Ready for Hillary super-PAC said in a statement today that it also received money from 90,000 supporters since the organization started in January 2013 after holding more than 500 fundraisers.
Clinton, 66, the former first lady and secretary of state, has said she’ll decide later this year whether to run for president as a Democrat in 2016. The super-PAC is led by Adam Parkhomenko, who has advocated for a Clinton presidential campaign for more than a decade.
The super-PAC is laying the groundwork for a run and is barred from coordinating with a potential Clinton campaign. Should Clinton run, the super-PAC could sell its assets to her campaign -- including a database of more than 2.5 million supporters.
Ready for Hillary’s fundraising came even as Clinton struggled with questions about her personal wealth during a tour intended to promote “Hard Choices,” a memoir about her tenure as secretary of state.
While giving an interview about the book to ABC’s Diane Sawyer in June, Clinton described the family as “dead broke” after her husband Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001.
‘Well Off’
Speaking to Great Britain’s Guardian newspaper, she tried to distinguish her family’s financial position from the “truly well off,” which further raised questions about her ability to connect with Democrats who view income inequality as a key issue.
She is scheduled to be interviewed by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart Today.
Staff from the super-PAC plan to travel to Detroit later this week to the Netroots Nation annual conference, billed as the “country’s largest progressive gathering.” Clinton has addressed the group in the past, though isn’t on the schedule this year.
Ready for Hillary, based in Arlington, Virginia, raised $1.7 million in the first quarter of the year. The group has a self-imposed donation cap of $25,000.
The super-PAC reported receiving 43,000 contributions from April through June. The average contribution was $57, according to the group, and 98 percent of the donations were for $100 or less.
Past donors to Ready for Hillary include Alice Walton, the daughter of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton, billionaire financier George Soros and Laurene Jobs, the widow of Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs.
A different group, Priorities USA, is accepting unlimited donations to back a potential Clinton candidacy.