Nearly 10 months after Kamala Harris’ devastating loss to President Donald Trump, the Democratic National Committee is still paying millions in bills from her shocking $1.5 billion spending spree, leaving the party financially crippled and donors increasingly reluctant to contribute.
In fact, the DNC has paid more than $20.5 million in Harris campaign spending after her November defeat, according to federal records.
It has created a massive cash disadvantage against Republicans heading into the 2026 midterms.
The financial arrangement was structured as a secret “handshake deal” between Harris advisers and DNC officials immediately after the election.
Under the agreement, the cash-strapped DNC agreed to pay off Harris’ outstanding campaign debts in exchange for her pledge to raise money in the future to make the party “whole financially.”
The deal was never disclosed to donors, who received nearly 100 email solicitations from the Harris operation this year alone that claimed their contributions would fund future elections rather than settle old Harris spending debts from her failed campaign.
“They will put your donation to work immediately toward winning the next set of elections,” Harris wrote in one February email to supporters, according to the New York Times. In reality, the DNC maintained a ledger tracking how much Harris raised versus how much they have paid for her expenses… even after she had lost the election.
The massive spending has left Democrats in dire financial straits. The DNC began 2025 with $22.1 million in the bank but ended July with only $13.9 million, while the Republican National Committee entered August with $84.3 million — six times as much as the Democrats.
Ineed, nearly 20 cents of every dollar the DNC spent in the first seven months of 2025 went toward paying Harris’ bills, federal records show. The party’s financial situation has become so desperate that officials have begun discussing whether to open a line of credit.
The eye-popping expenses reveal the scope of Harris’s rapid spending during her short 15-week campaign. Federal Election Commission records show the DNC has recently made several six-figure payments to cover Harris’ costs, including $3.5 million to Village Marketing Agency for online influencer work, $2.1 million to media production company Assembly House LLC, nearly $440,000 to chartered plane companies, and $100,000 to SpringHill Company, the entertainment firm co-founded by NBA star LeBron James.
One event production company, Freeman, received nine separate payments from the DNC since December, totaling about $3.5 million. The most recent expense covered by the DNC was $498,287.30 to Howard University, Harris’ alma mater, where she delivered her concession speech.
The continued payments have sparked anger and finger-pointing among Democrats nearly 10 months after the landslide election loss. Some donors and senior Democrats remain angry that Harris spent an unprecedented $1.5 billion during her brief campaign and still badly lost the popular vote, Electoral College, and all seven swing states to Trump.
“Some donors have grown reluctant to give the DNC more money even as the party is trying to pivot to the 2026 midterms,” according to reports.
Democrats have pressed Harris and her team to hold more fundraisers and personally call donors to help cover her post-election expenses. The total money raised from Harris fundraising events has been “disappointing,” according to sources familiar with the matter.
Harris has allowed the DNC to continue using her email list and has held a few small fundraising events, but the Harris fundraising operation has essentially shut down. There has not been a single email in August from the Harris operation benefiting the DNC, down from more than a dozen per month earlier in the year.
The arrangement helped obscure the true extent of Harris’s unpaid bills after the election. Campaign chief financial officer Patrick Stauffer told reporters in November that “there will be no debt” and “there were no outstanding debts or bills overdue” as of Election Day.
But several million dollars worth of expenses continued rolling in during the following post-election months. Harris campaign officials had expected to raise more money during a prolonged vote-counting process that never materialized when the race was called early Wednesday morning.
Some Harris allies have attempted to deflect blame toward new DNC Chairman Ken Martin, arguing he hasn’t focused enough on fundraising while bolstering his public profile at events and media interviews.
In June, Martin had boasted of raising “a record $40 million” in his first four months as chairman, though much of that came from Harris’s network settling her debts.