'No way': Democratic donors balk at donating to Biden's presidential library

Former President Joe Biden is running into a problem in his nascent effort to raise money for a presidential library: Donors are checked out.

“I want an $800,000 refund,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based personal injury lawyer. He was referring to the nearly $1 million he said he raised for Biden that went to then-Vice President Kamala Harris last year, after she assumed Biden’s role as the Democratic presidential nominee.

“I don’t believe a library will ever be built unless it’s a bookmobile from the old days,” added Morgan, who is a longtime Biden devotee.

Susie Buell, a major donor in the Democratic Party, said, “No one has asked, but I am not inclined to give to libraries.”

“I’d like him to have some nice library,” a third donor chimed in. “I just don’t see that’s where I’m going to spend my money.”

And a fourth, who was a Biden bundler and onetime administration official, replied succinctly: “Me? No way.”

Most of the more than half a dozen people who were once major Biden donors or bundlers who spoke with NBC News said they harbored no ill will toward Biden himself but either wouldn’t give to the library or would give only a token amount. A number of them requested anonymity to speak frankly.

They cited a range of factors, from not wanting to make themselves a target of the White House to holding their financial firepower for the party’s future. Some cited personal interactions with Biden’s inner circle as being so distasteful they believed it would be a barrier to ever raising significant funds for the 46th president of the United States.

Biden also faces residual anger from the party over his decision to seek a second term despite health issues. Biden then upended the party’s nomination process with a late exit after his mental frailties were in full view during a June 2024 televised debate.

Rufus Gifford, who led fundraising for Biden’s re-election campaign and was finance director for President Barack Obama, was named chairman of the library board. He said he is optimistic that, despite some of the challenges, donors will want to sign on to the project.

“Those of us who have been around for a while and love the guy but also understand the full picture want to see what we can do to protect and promote his legacy,” Gifford said. “This isn’t about the past. It’s about the future.”

One person familiar with the Biden team’s plans said the project would have a goal of bringing in between $200 million and $300 million. That’s far from the more than $850 million cost of the Obama Presidential Library, due to open in Chicago in the spring. While still in office, President Donald Trump has commanded millions of dollars for a future library — something Democrats have decried as fundraising without guardrails — not to mention a controversial decision that the U.S. Air Force acquire an opulent 747 megajet from the Qatari royal family that is later to be transferred to a Trump library foundation.

“It is my opinion no significant building will be built,” Morgan went on, saying his suggestion of a bookmobile was a joke, “but not by much.” He cited Biden’s age — 82 — and medical issues as reasons the former president might not be much help raising money for the library. “Couple that with the perception that [the party’s] woes rest with his decision to seek a second term and we have the Hindenburg heading straight towards us.”

Those who frequently interact with major Democratic donors say there are other obstacles.

“This is a very difficult time to raise large checks for Democrats because of how vindictive Donald Trump is,” Democratic National Committee fundraising chair Chris Korge said, citing conversations with big-money donors.

And donors long groaned about a lack of access to the former president when he was in office. They said they were tapped time and again to write checks but then couldn’t get a phone call returned, with some blaming a close-knit circle for isolating the president — only for contributors to later find out he was showing signs of mental decline.

Korge said early on he had more than once personally urged Biden and his team to focus on raising money for a library and to perhaps put aside ambitions to seek a second term.

“I did tell them that if Biden didn’t run [in 2024] he would go out as a hero, and he could focus the last two years of his term on setting himself up to raise a lot of money for the library,” Korge said.

As for Biden’s ability to tap major funds from donors today, Korge said presidents have unique opportunities to put themselves in front of some of the most influential people in the country and that “in retrospect he probably should have done more of that.”

Korge cited a farewell dinner that Biden held at the White House last year as an example of a large-scale, pull-out-all-the-stops event that wooed political fundraisers. But by then, he said, it was too late.

“It was one of the most spectacular dinners I had ever been invited to at the White House,” said Korge, who has spent decades raising money for Democratic presidential candidates. “[But] it was after the election. He should have done more of that in my opinion.”

For many Democrats, the future is about funding campaigns between now and next year’s midterm elections.

Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, said she had not heard about the Biden library effort and is skeptical about the appetite to give at a time when there are competing demands for cash.

“They want a plan of how we’re going to save democracy and how we’re going to put this country back onto a better page and turn the page of the Trump administration and the destruction of our economy and international affairs,” Fried said. “I don’t know if the donors will be ready to give dollars to you to a library when we’ve got real issues to focus on today.”

More broadly, she said, fundraising has been a challenge across the board for Democrats because donors are still furious about flooding coffers with money in 2024 and losing anyway.

“This ecosystem, the last cycle, raised more money than probably has ever been raised, and we don’t have Congress, we don’t have the White House, and we don’t have additional powers at the state level,” she said. “And so there’s a real conversation happening about where we go from here and how do we do things differently, and donors on the national level are holding back dollars until they have a game plan.”

Another prominent donor with close ties to Biden said he might make a “token” donation to the Biden library effort if asked, but he would not give a large amount of money.

“With everything that’s going on in our country right now, there are so many important things that need to be funded,” the donor said.

He said he sees the library effort, which he has not yet been contacted about, as a difficult one for Biden because the former president’s base of committed donors is small. Biden started with a small set of fundraising heavyweights, did not hand out many plum posts to top givers and was not good at making his donors feel appreciated, this person said. Biden’s age figures to make the raising effort even harder.

The person characterized the obstacles ahead.

“I don’t think ‘hill’ is the proper term,” he said. “It’s going to be much steeper than that.”

A major donor who was part of the administration emphasized Biden’s decision not to use a greater number of ambassadorship appointments as a way to reward — and woo — tycoons.

“There’s a reason why ambassadors are wealthy people — because you need them at some point,” this person said.

A former bundler who was historically involved in Biden fundraising pointed to the publication of books reliving the Democrats’ 2024 travails and the drag they are having on a party that needs to finally move forward.

“Democrats need to pick themselves up and start doing and stop whining and complaining about what happened,” the person said. “Joe Biden has been a public servant to this country on the world stage for decades, we owe him a huge debt of gratitude.”

“The ending was not pretty, we all know that,” the person said. “But the country and he deserves a foundation and library museum.”

Would this person ante up for it, then? “Nobody’s asked me,” the person said.

Would they volunteer the money? “I don’t know.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com