Over the course of the past few months, Kamala Harris has raised over 1 billion dollars towards her Presidential Campaign. Her primary financial ally, Future Forward, raised an additional 900 million dollars, much more money than an outside group has ever contributed to a campaign. The large quantity of donations brought in by her campaign contrasted with her loss of the election is leaving Americans wondering how efficient her spending campaign actually was.
The campaign spent the majority of the money it raised, around 680 million dollars, on its media campaign — amassing a wide range of television ads and social media marketing. The campaign also needed to pay off the large number of people working for it: about 45 million dollars was spent paying campaign and event staff. Additionally, more than 50 million dollars were put towards travel costs for Harris’s extensive rally schedule, and polling for the campaign cost more than 12 million dollars from July to October. In total, the campaign averaged a spending value of about 100 million dollars per week.
Harris’s extravagant performances constituted a large cost in her budget as well. With drone shows, celebrity concerts at rallies and on election-eve, and a payment to Oprah’s production firm to stage a live-stream in Detroit, Democrats have started to wonder whether these expenses actually had a positive impact on Harris’s campaign, especially considering that Donald Trump won the election with raising and spending only a third of the amount.
As we discussed in class this past week, many interest groups strive to gain candidate support by donating money, benefitting the groups by pushing their endorsed politicians into office and giving them more leverage through new connections. With all of the money donated to the Harris campaign, many groups and individuals are disappointed at their lack of representation seen in the government now that she has lost, as well as frustrated from not being able to receive any desired legislature or support in return for their donations. In fact, Trump’s policies oppose those of many of these interest groups, so their contributions may be seen as entirely futile.
However, executives close to Harris have stated that the high level of campaign spending and the contributions of all of her donors did in fact have an impact on the election. Bakari Sellers emphasized that “There is not a single expenditure in a different spot that would have changed the outcome of the race,” while Future Forward leaders argue that Trump’s performance in battleground states that the Harris campaign invested in was not wildly better than in the 2020 election.
After the election, the Harris campaign is up to quite the peculiar shenanigans. Unsurprisingly, the campaign has had to lay off hundreds of workers, cutting payroll by about 70 percent. However, the campaign is still asking for money — while not exposing the intention as to cover debts, Democrats are increasingly suspicious that the campaign is trying to make back money lost its spending spree over the past few months. Adrian Hemond, a Democratic strategist, says, “The Harris campaign certainly spent more than they raised and is now busy trying to fundraise.” The Harris Campaign has held a fair amount of secrecy regarding its current financial situation. However, Patrick Stauffer, the CFO for Harris’s Presidential Campaign, mentioned that on election day the campaign didn’t have any overdue debts, and there “will be no debt” when the Harris Campaign’s and DNC’s financial information is shared in December.
Nonetheless, daily emails from the campaign and Democratic Party are sent to possible donors each day, aiming at previous contributors who gave hundreds of dollars or less. These emails appeal to donations for the “Harris Fight Fund” (formerly the “Harris Victory Fund”), supporting potential recounts for Democrats in tight congressional races. These emails are also rousing fear, warning recipients of Trump’s agenda and potential threats to Democracy. As the campaign rebuilds from “the most expensive loss on record,” the Democratic party sets to continue its fundraising efforts in preparation for the 2026 midterm elections.
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c3e80x71x0ko
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-fundraising-campaign-appeals/
9 comments:
Kamala Harris had more than one billion dollars to campaign. This is a lot of money to be used for a single presidential campaign and the way she used the money is also quite interesting. First off she was spending a lot of money and according to the New York times used 1.5 billion dollars in 15 weeks. There are some eye raising expenditures on this list which could have been used for something else. This is further emphasized when Mr. Korge, a Democratic National Committee’s finance chair, said he “will absolutely push for an introspective study and analysis of the campaign, its structure, its messaging, all communication platforms and budgeting”. Within the democratic party there is some suspicion that Kamala Harris didn’t use the money correctly. Now what will happen is up to debate, if she will run next time and still have the same amount of support from the party and the people will be a big question. I do believe that if Harris had properly used her money, she could have had a different result. She was too childish with her money and had she used it right I do believe that she could have one over millions of Americans making the race much more equal.
I'd like to add in an idea about paid media versus earned media: the alternative media complex that endorsed Trump unequivocally and gave him lots of coverage from Joe Rogan/Theo Von podcasts to TikTok and Instagram channels that either aligned with Trump or posted actual Trump content, with people like Charlie Kirk jumping to mind, resulted in a huge media campaign that Trump virtually did not have to spend money on due to his value as a celebrity and the cult that he's built around him. To contrast, I read that Harris paid $100,000 to be on one podcast that didn't even gross 1 million views and paying celebrities to appear couldn't beat the so-called "revolutionary" appeal of Trump and the right-wing media apparatus.
Interestingly enough, I heard the same comment about the Harris podcast claiming that she paid 6 million to be featured, identifying the discrepancies in misinformation, trying to make her campaign seem a lot less effective than it was.
On one hand her spending is ridiculous in its sheer amount and the questionable choices she made with them. $50 million in transportation alone is shocking to me, and celebrity appearances, $100 million a week, and paying to be on a podcast seems irresponsible. That said her campaign can't really be compared to Trump. He has had a high visibility for decades now, everyone knows who he is and what he stands for already, its no surprise that he doesn't need to buy more visibility, in fact the media seems to come to him first. I don't think better spending could have gave Harris the win, Trump had the extreme advantage of celebrity status and a cult following, but as we learned visibility mostly solidifies and strengthens views rather than changing them. More importantly I think there were many flaws in the Democratic party as a whole that made winning almost impossible, and these shortcomings are clear as they lost every swing state in the electoral college.
This article highlights the unprecedented amount of money that the Harris campaign raised and spent for this election. Especially in contrast to the amount that Trump raised and spent in campaigning. It's easy to just look at these numbers and say that Trump must be really good at campaigning compared to Harris. But I don't feel like it is fair to compare these two. Trump has already been the president and has been in the media for decades. even before 2016, he was practically a household name, compared to Kamala which the majority of Americans probably didn't even know until 4 years ago. Overall while I do feel like she may not have spent her campaigning money in the smartest ways I do feel like she needed to spend much more money than Trump on campaigning.
I was thinking about this in the context of marketing/awareness levels and would like to add on to this:
Tons of money needed for visibility and didn't really pay off. I remember seeing the Google Trend where there was a spike of searches for "did Joe Biden drop out" on voting day, which highlights that beyond the political world that many of us keep tabs on, there are millions and millions of people that are either uninformed or generally don't really care to be informed. While the celebrity appearances were cool, they didn't really add to Harris's campaign because she still lacked so much visibility and people simply didn't know who she was. If 1 billion dollars couldn't push her to a win, I doubt that 10 billion would have. I don't think there's much that could have changed the outcome of this election because people simply didn't have enough time to warm up to Harris.
Regarding the fact that Harris used the campaign money to invite celebrities to her rally, I just feel like it wasn’t worth it. I understand that attention is important, and celebrities might have the most attention in the world. However, I don’t think the idea of inviting a celebrity aligns with the whole point of campaigns: to sell yourself. Even if Harris got a hold of a celebrity that attracted a great portion of the population, that is the celebrity’s power and people are there to support the celebrity not the candidate. So, this use of fundraising to invite celebrities itself may have disappointed the population about her financial decisions.
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