Fredreka Schouten and Christopher Schnaars

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump each raced to their strongest fundraising month of the campaign in July, but Clinton and her allies continue to outmuscle her GOP rival in the air and ground war for the presidency, according to new details of the candidates’ spending.

Clinton pulled in more than $52 million directly into her campaign last month and spent more than $38 million, according to her campaign’s filings Saturday with federal election regulators.

Trump raised nearly $36.7 million for his campaign and spent at a far slower pace than Clinton, reporting nearly $18.5 million in expenses in July as Clinton and her allies savaged him on the airwaves.

Hillary Clinton's super PAC raised $9.3 million in July

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Trump, who has shunned much of the traditions of presidential campaigns, grew his staff modestly last month, employing 82 people, a USA TODAY review shows. Clinton, by contrast, employed 703 aides in July as she readied for her confrontation with Trump in key battlegrounds such as Ohio and Florida.

New campaign reports filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission show Clinton with another advantage: Super-wealthy Democrats are giving early and often to boost the former secretary of State’s presidential bid and to aid Democrats hoping to seize seats in Congress. Billionaires, such as California environmentalist Tom Steyer and financier George Soros, plowed millions into Democratic-aligned super PACs last month.

Steyer alone pumped $7 million of his hedge-fund fortune into his super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, which plans an aggressive campaign to turn out voters to help Clinton and others in the party.

Two deep-pocketed Democrats, Slim-Fast founder Daniel Abraham and financier Donald Sussman, contributed $3 million each last month to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC aiding Clinton. In all, Sussman has doled out $11 million to Priorities so far in this election. A super PAC can raise unlimited amounts.

Trump, a real-estate magnate who self-funded his bid for the GOP nomination, has relied less on the super-wealthy for financial support, drawing a large share of his donations from the supporters who flock to his rallies, follow him on Twitter and answer his email solicitations.

His filings show that Trump pulled in $12.7 million last month from people who donated in amounts of $200 or less. That accounts for nearly 65% of his individual contributions.

Clinton, however, is making inroads among small donors who can be tapped repeatedly for contributions before they hit the $2,700 limit on general-election contributions.Last month, she took in about $11.4 million in small contributions, up from $5.88 million in June. Those small donations made up about 36% of her contributions from individuals last month, up from nearly 25% a month earlier, the filings show.

Trump’s reliance on small donors comes as few of the GOP’s wealthiest givers have invested in his presidential ambitions.

Two of the super PACs aiding his bid – Great America PAC and Make America Number 1 – together raised nearly $4.5 million in July. A single contributor, New York hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer, accounted for $2 million of that total.

Another super PAC that has begun to spend heavily to promote Trump’s candidacy, Rebuilding America Now, and has ties to a longtime Trump friend, California businessman Tom Barrack, won’t file a report on its fundraising until later this year.

In all, Clinton’s campaign team boasts that it collected $90 million last month for Hillary for America and its two joint fundraising operations with the Democratic National Committee.

Her campaign alone started August with nearly $58.5 million in available cash.

Trump’s aides have said the campaign collected $80 million directly and through joint-fundraising arrangements with the Republican National Committee, after lagging behind Clinton during the first two months of the general-election campaign.

His reports, released late Saturday night, show his campaign starting August with $38.4 million in available cash, far less money than Clinton had stockpiled. However, Trump can boost that number easily by dipping into his personal fortune.

Trump added another $2 million of his own money to the campaign last month, bringing his total contributions to nearly $45 million, FEC records show.

His campaign continued to pay money to Trump's companies for expenses, such as rent and travel. More than $782,000 went to various Trump enterprises, including his airline, Tag Air.

Trump’s single largest expense in July: $8.4 million paid to San Antonio company Giles-Parscale for digital consulting and online advertising. Payments to the firm accounted for more than 45% of Trump’s expenses last month. The firm has longstanding ties to the Trump Organization. Its website lists several other Trump-related enterprises in its client portfolio, including Trump Winery, Trump International Realty, the Eric Trump Foundation and Melania Trump’s cosmetics and fashion-jewelry business.

The firm's president Brad Parscale became the Trump campaign's digital director in June.

The filing also shows Trump making a $20,000 payment to Green Monster Consulting, the firm run by his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, weeks after Lewandowski left the campaign.

With Team Trump improving its financial picture in July, Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, are intensifying their fundraising pace, barnstorming the country in the weeks ahead to collect cash from wealthy Democrats and celebrities.

On Tuesday, for instance, Hollywood power couple, singer Justin Timberlake and actress Jessica Biel, are slated to host a Clinton fundraising lunch.

Trump, who has shunned creating a traditional campaign structure, is relying heavily on the Republican National Committee to help organize his high-dollar fundraising events and to build a field operation to identify and turn out voters.

The RNC has deployed hundreds of workers to battleground states. Saturday’s campaign filings show the RNC with 251 people on its payroll in July. National party officials say they now have 504 staffers in the field, with the highest numbers working in Pennsylvania and Florida, where Trump needs to gain ground on Clinton.

On Friday, Trump launched his first commercials of the general-election campaign, spending $4.8 million to run ads into those two states, along with Ohio and North Carolina.

Clinton and her allies, however, have dominated the airwaves since June, pumping more than $100 million into TV ads that promote Clinton and blister Trump as unfit to serve in the White House and out of touch with working Americans.