Trump US rallies leave behind unpaid dues, again and again

In the United States, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faces a growing pile of missed payments for rallies and legal bills during his current bid for the presidency, previous campaigns, and in the private sector.

This comes only weeks before the 2024 general election, where he is set to face off against Democratic presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris, who holds a tight lead in several key polls. A Marist poll out on Wednesday shows her leading the former US president by five points, four points from a Morning Consult poll and four points from an Economist/YouGov poll.

Harris just surpassed $1bn in fundraising and has, in the past three months, raised nearly twice as much as the Trump campaign. The Trump team is experiencing a decline in small-dollar donors, with contributions of $200 or less now making up fewer than a third of donations. At this point in the 2020 election cycle, those contributions accounted for nearly half of all donations, according to an analysis by the Associated Press and Open Secrets, a non-profit organisation based in Washington, DC.

The Trump campaign’s financial challenges are only underscored by the growing list of parties to whom he and the entities he represents owe money.

While campaigns across the political spectrum have occasionally missed payments, including US Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign in 2016, Trump’s failure to meet payment deadlines stands out due to its long-term pattern.

Unpaid costs at rallies

Trump owes cities across the country for costs associated with staging a rally, including security costs, public safety expenses, allocation of resources and, in some cases, facility rentals.

One of the bills he owes is to the City of Prescott Valley in Arizona. City officials told Al Jazeera that Trump’s campaign has not paid the full costs of his local rally in 2022. The city said it is still owed $25,737.32.

A city spokesperson told Al Jazeera that they had asked the campaign to pay up front for the most recent rally held earlier this month.

This is far from the only outstanding bill the Republican nominee owes in this swing state of Arizona. The city of Mesa invoiced the campaign for an October 2018 rally. Its attorney followed up a few months later, in December, for payment of $64,477.56, but with no success.