WASHINGTON - A super political action committee urging former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016 said it raised more than $1.7 million in the first three months of this year.
The super PAC, Ready for Hillary, has collected $5.75 million from 55,000 people since the pro-Clinton effort was created a year ago, it said Thursday in a statement. In the quarter, 22,000 new contributors gave an average of $53, and 98 percent of the contributions were for $100 or less.
About 9,500 donations were for a symbolic $20.16, a popular option at Ready for Hillary’s events nationwide.
Clinton, 66, has said she will make a decision on a White House bid by the end of this year.
“I am thinking about it,” Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York, said Tuesday after a speech in San Francisco. “I’m not going to make a decision for a while because I’m actually enjoying my life.”
Ready for Hillary will file a report to the Federal Election Commission by Tuesday detailing its donors and spending for the first quarter.
It previously raised $4 million in 2013 from donors including billionaire financier George Soros and Alice Walton, the daughter of Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton.
Walton and Soros each gave $25,000, the maximum Ready for Hillary is accepting from individual donors even though super PACs are permitted to accept contributions in unlimited amounts. The PAC’s leaders said they want to focus on building grass-roots support by identifying supporters on Facebook, shipping bumper stickers and holding pro-Clinton events.
Former California Assembly speaker Fabian Nunez; former U.S. Trade Representative Glen Fukushima; former Goldman Sachs executive Daniel Neidich; and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, also gave the maximum donation.
Other early backers have included Sharon Elghanayan Corzine, the wife of former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine; gay-rights activist and software executive Tim Gill; and former Pennsylvania Bar Association president Leslie Miller. In the past three months, each gave $25,000.
The group said it had identified 2 million Clinton supporters and had persuaded 700,000 people to sign a pledge to help her win if she runs. Contributions were received from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. territories, the group said.
One of Clinton’s donation bundlers, who did not want to be quoted by name, said many of the biggest donors from her 2008 presidential campaign will not become fully involved until Clinton makes a formal announcement.
Clinton is not in contact with Ready for Hillary or other groups urging her to run, but she is aware that the fundraising efforts are gaining steam and has not told donors to stop giving, the bundler said.
Ready for Hillary has a long list of events planned in cities as disparate as San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Kansas City, Mo. The group said it will shut down if Clinton announces her intentions to run and likely will ask donors to transfer their support to the official campaign.
Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that aired television ads in 2012 promoting President Barack Obama and attacking Republican challenger Mitt Romney, also is preparing to aid a Clinton 2016 campaign.
Information for this article was contributed by Greg Giroux and Elizabeth Wasserman of Bloomberg News; by Amy Chozick of The New York Times; and by Philip Elliott of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 04/11/2014