It's beginning to look like construction plans for a Biden presidential library may need to be scaled back dramatically with a desperate fund-raising program featuring a Wilmington, Delaware garage scale raffle of his 1967 Corvette Stingray reflecting vanishing donors in the rear-view mirror.
The New York Times reported that after being seeded with $4 million from Joe's 2021 inauguration stash, the Biden library fund received no new contributions in 2024.
Last year the Biden foundation told the IRS it expected to bring in $11.3 million total by the end of 2027, far less than the $200 million goal Biden aides told the Times they originally wanted to raise.
Discussions are reportedly underway about consolidating a future library with preexisting "Biden institutions" already constructed at the University of Delaware enabling the foundation to tap into millions of dollars the former president's alma mater has already secured to build a "Biden Hall."
Headed by Rufus Gifford, a longtime Obama fundraiser and former ambassador to Denmark, the foundation put out a statement announcing that it had delayed fundraisers until now to allow time for "intensive research" which includes visits to other presidential libraries.
According to the Times, the Biden Hall and Biden library are currently two separate projects “competing for the same pool of donors,” adding that “many loyalists say they hope the library could be housed inside the hall, turning two projects into one.”
Some former donors told the Times they are unlikely to give money for the library because they are focused on beating Trump or are embittered by Biden’s term in office.
NBC News reported that more than half a dozen former major Biden donors they interviewed harbored no ill will towards him, they either won’t contribute to the library - or if so – will pitch in only a token amount, with some citing distasteful personal interactions with his inner circle as a barrier.
Former Florida-based personal injury lawyer John Morgan, longtime Democratic Party donor and one of Biden's top supporters, told the Times that he won't cough up another penny towards the library due to poor treatment he has received from Joe’s staff, projecting, "He’ll be lucky to have a bookmobile."
Morgan told NBC News, "I want an $800,000 refund," referring to the money he raised for Biden that went to support then-Vice president Kamala Harris as the Democrats' replacement nominee candidate, further commenting, "Couple that with the perception that [the Democratic Party’s] woes rest with his decision to seek a second term and we have the Hindenburg heading straight towards us."
Citing conversations with big-money Democratic donors, DNC fundraising chair Chris Korge observed that many groaned that after being tapped to write checks time and again they couldn't get phone calls returned, with some blaming a close-knit staff for isolating him – only later to learn he was showing signs of mental decline.
Korge told NBC News that he had more than once urged Biden early on to focus on raising money for a library and perhaps put aside ambitions for a second term in 2024 to "go out as a hero," but instead, now faces anger from the party for having upended the nomination process with a late exit after his mental frailties were exposed in full view during the June 2024 televised debate with former President Trump.
No one can accuse Bill Clinton of neglecting his successful Clinton Foundation's presidential library fundraising efforts led by Terry McAuliffe which put together about $165 million in tax deductible private funding in addition to $11.5 million in land given by the city of Little Rock to build the 152,000 square foot structure.
Approximately 10% of that money came from overseas, including about $10 million from Saudi Arabia with lesser amounts from other foreign governments including Kuwait and Taiwan.
Then there's Barack Obama’s monstrously appearing and costly 60,000-square-foot so-called "presidential center" that dominates about 20 acres of the 540-acre Jackson Park in the South Side of Chicago.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the project has racked up an estimated $850 million in construction costs so far, nearly triple the original $300 million estimate first proposed when the project was conceived and headed for more than $1 billion or more by the time it opens in 2026 following several delays and legal suits.
By contrast, former President Harry S. Truman's modest presidential library and museum which opened in 1957 cost $1.7 million . . . amounting to about $34 million today.
And after all, why do former presidents warrant enormous libraries enshrining their importance anyway, unless of course great national achievements and global influences measure up to such majestic tributes?
Applying this measure, donors to Democrats apparently believe that Joe's presidential legacy represents a monumental embarrassment best left forgotten.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read more Larry Bell Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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