Article snippet: Democratic presidential hopefuls are barreling toward a critical quarterly fundraising deadline on Sunday that will offer one of the clearest signs to date of viability in a sprawling primary field.With more than 15 candidates seeking the party’s presidential nomination and grass-roots fundraising being used as one of two factors in determining who will make it to the primary debates, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) deadline is likely to carry even more weight this year."This determines who the real top tier is. This determines press coverage," Jeff Roe, who managed Sen. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), an adept fundraiser in his own right, has noted in emails to supporters that some other Democrats "started with millions of dollars from past campaigns" and that he has had "a lot less time to fundraise."Sen. Candidates aren’t required to hit the 65,000-donor threshold by the March 31 reporting deadline to qualify for the first Democratic debate. Adam Parkhomenko, a former aide to MORE (I-Vt.) are already touting their small-dollar donor armies as a sign of their momentum and long-term political viability.In the first 24 hours after launching his 2020 presidential bid, Sanders’s campaign said it had raised a whopping $5.9 million from 223,047 individual contributors across all 50 states. Likewise, O’Rourke’s campaign said it raked in $6.1 million from more than 128,000 unique contributions in the first 24 hours.With Sanders comfortably within the donor ... Link to the full article to read more