Do presidential candidates really need your money at this point in the race?

I have an inbox full of emails from the Trump and Harris campaigns pleading for cash. To be clear, I do not make donations to political campaigns — haven’t given anyone a penny. Still, the emails and texts keep coming.

At this point in the presidential campaign, the fundraising pleas from the candidates are deafening. And they’re not stopping — far from it. Often, they’ll have subject lines like “Desperate Circumstances!” “Meet Trump!” “$7 makes a difference.” I even got an exclusive recipe offer.

Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the think tank New America, gets those begging emails too.

“Three dollars, five dollars, anything — just give us some money!” he said. “Because we have $1 billion and we need more.”

At this stage of the campaign, Drutman said that the presidential candidates are flush with cash and don’t need your money. So why do they keep begging?

It might be that no one wants to fall behind in the money race, he said. But he also blames political consultants who pretty much run the campaigns and turn a tidy profit by making and placing the ads candidates buy with their mountains of fundraised money.

“This is the season in which you can make a lot of money, so why not keeping asking for it? Because people keep giving it,” Drutman said.

If you still want to give, donate to cash-strapped state and local candidates, Drutman added. That’s where your money really could make a difference.