Andrew Yang predicts he will double campaign cash haul in third quarter

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Andrew Yang gets emotional talking gun reform

Presidential nominee Andrew Yang tears up discussing gun safety at a gun sense forum.

PORTSMOUTH, NH – Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang says he believes he will double his campaign cash haul when he reports his fundraising figures for the third quarter of this year, contending that his White House bid "is catching.”

“We are going to raise more than twice as much money in the third quarter than we did in the second quarter, at a time when many other campaigns are starting to shrink,” Yang told Fox News.

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The tech entrepreneur from New York, once viewed by many observers as the longest of long-shot hopefuls seeking the Democratic nomination, was interviewed after unveiling his climate change plan during a campaign swing in New Hampshire. That state famously holds the first presidential primary in the race for the White House.

Yang brought in $2.8 million in the April-June second quarter of fundraising -- a respectable figure for a lower-tier presidential contender but far short of frontrunners' much more substantial hauls.

Yang – a first-time candidate who had no name recognition when he launched his White House bid early last year -- has seen his campaign soar in recent months, thanks in part to the popularity of his push for a $1,000-per-month universal income for all adult Americans, which he calls a "Freedom Dividend."

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While a current governor and a former governor have dropped out of the race in recent days -- and two current senators will likely fail to make the stage at next month’s third round of Democratic primary debates -- Yang easily qualified to make the cut.

Asked how he makes the jump to a top-tier contender, an optimistic Yang said, “The more people who dig into our platform, our ideas for the country, the more excited they get and the better we do.”

And he pointed to the third and fourth rounds of debates as prime opportunities to increase his name recognition, saying his main task is “to introduce myself to more and more Americans because most Americans still do not know who I am.”

Yang said “that’s one of the reasons why our capacity for growth is so much higher than other campaigns. A lot of other campaigns, their ceiling is sort of baked in, whereas no one knows what our ceiling is. But we’re going to find out together.”

And Yang said that “the media is starting to get it, in part because we are a top campaign by any objective measurement.”

The most recent CNN power rankings of the Democratic nomination race – compiled by the network’s analysts Chris Cillizza and Harry Enten -- didn’t include Yang.

The candidate jokingly said, “Chris, if you’re watching this, you’re going to look pretty bad in just a minute."

Turning serious again, Yang insisted his presidential bid “is catching just as the American people are getting more and more excited about me and the campaign.”

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Earlier, Yang unveiled "Lower Emissions, Higher Ground," his proposal to combat climate change and support communities already fighting the effects of global warming.

Standing in front of the picturesque Piscatuaqua River and Portsmouth harbor, he said: “I’m a parent. I’ve got two kids who are 6 and 4. And I don’t want to leave them a shambles of a planet and epic disaster.”

Yang’s plan calls for building a more sustainable national economy, including speeding up the move toward a renewable energy economy, exporting the country’s technologies to try and more quickly build a sustainable world economy, moving people (literally and figuratively) to higher ground and trying to reverse the damage already done by climate change.

Among the steps he would take, Yang said “my plan has a date of 2030 for all vehicles to be emission-free. So any new vehicle will be emission-free.”

Fox News' Andrew Keiper contributed to this report.