Several Democratic Campaigns Face Cash Crisis Ahead of Super Tuesday

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is about to enter its most competitive phase yet, and it's likely to be the end for some of the eight remaining candidates.

Who will be the next to drop out is anyone's guess, but several campaigns are either struggling to find a solid footing in early voting states or running out of cash—or in some cases both.

Four of the top six presidential campaigns entered February with near-depleted bank accounts, according to new campaign finance filings. And once you're out of cash, it's nearly impossible to recover.

"You are on a wing and a prayer when you run out of money. Miracles can happen, but it's rare," Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Third Way think tank, told Newsweek.

Right now, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, with just $2.3 million, is the candidate with the least amount of money in the bank. She became the first top-tier candidate to borrow money, taking a $3 million line of credit in January, though she only accessed $400,000 of it.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigeg are also in the red, with $2.9 million and $6.6 million in cash on hand, respectively. Former Vice President Joe Biden is also low on funds as he entered this month with just over $7 million in his account.

In fact, one of the only Democratic hopefuls—who is not a self-funded billionaire—that has enough money to be competitive in all of the Super Tuesday states is Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator raised more than any other candidate last month and entered February with $17 million cash on hand.

Ami Copeland, a former deputy national finance director to Barack Obama, told Newsweek that the biggest problem for Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Warren is that they're essentially "splitting all of the possible fundraising as they try to compete with Sanders."

Copeland added that the Biden, Buttigieg and Warren campaigns have a lot of "fixed costs" such as staffing that will cause them to burn through their money more quickly. Klobuchar's team, on the other hand, is slightly less robust and is likely to last the longest even with less in the bank.

But once a campaign does run out of funds, he advised them to "fire everyone and spend what remaining money you have on television in hopes that others drop out and you are the last Bernie alternative left standing."

In addition to financial struggles, each of these candidates (besides Buttigieg, who has finished in the top three in each contest) has been mostly unsuccessful in the early-voting states so far. Biden came in fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and second in Nevada. Klobuchar and Warren have each broken into the top three once but were not as successful in other states.

The two Democrats who don't have to worry about fundraising at all are Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. The two billionaires have been pouring hundreds of millions into their 2020 campaigns with no signs of slowing down.

But having unlimited resources doesn't because necessarily mean that the two candidates can stay competitive and viable as the race goes on.

"Just because you have money doesn't mean you should stay in," Democratic strategist Douglas Herman told Newsweek. "If the ultimate goal is to beat Donald Trump, then that's just not helpful."

Herman predicted that Bloomberg and Steyer will fade to the background if they fail to perform well in the next early-voting contests. But he argued that anyone who doesn't have a significant block of delegates after Super Tuesday should "be on the list to drop out."

So far, none of the candidates has a clear advantage on the road to capturing the 1,990 delegates needed to secure the party's nomination. Sanders is currently in the lead with 35 delegates and Buttigieg is in second place with 24 delegates.

That could change after March 3, when 14 states award more than a third of all pledged delegates. But if the field of candidates doesn't start to shrink soon, strategists say it's likely that the Democratic Party could face a brokered convention.

"That will be very chaotic; and it could end up being very damaging, depending on the outcome. So it's scary," Bennett said.