Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign raised over $1 billion in donations, but blew through so much of their historic cash stockpile that Harris ended deeply in debt at the end, according to multiple sources.
After losing to President-elect Donald Trump, Harris’ senior staff now scrambling to settle the campaign’s accounts.
Throughout the campaign, Harris’ mismanagement of the economy had dogged her. Just how poorly she managed her own campaign’s spending, though, has stunned even critics.
“Kamala Harris’s campaign ended with at least $20 million in debt, per two sources familiar,” Politico’s California bureau chief Christopher Cadelago reported Wednesday.
“Harris raised over $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16,” he said.
Federal Election Commission data reveals the stunning numbers: the Harris campaign raised $1,009 million through October 16 and managed to burn through $890 million. The campaign dwarfed Trump’s fundraising, with his campaign reporting $392 million raised and $345 million spent in the same period. As of mid-October, Harris maintained $118 million in reserves compared to Trump’s $36.2 million.
A Harris campaign staffer blamed campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon’s spending decisions, particularly on expensive celebrity events.
“Jen blew through a billion dollars in a few months, and it was all Jen’s idea to do all the concerts,” the staffer told Breitbart News. “People didn’t like working with her. Many people on the campaign felt like we lost because Kamala wasn’t allowed to run her campaign.”
“They were running Joe Biden’s campaign instead of a Kamala campaign,” they saiud. “Obnoxious and very much a gate keeper and interfering with the vice president’s people who were trying to do their job.”
The campaign’s financial troubles have meant that numerous staffers and organizations who worked on the campaign are “still awaiting several overdue payments they were promised for their work.”
Deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty is now “currently shopping around the Kamala fundraising email list to anyone who wants” to buy it.
High-profile spending included lavish advertising efforts.
The campaign spent “six figures” on NFL game flyovers targeting male voters in swing states, according to The New York Times, while The Guardian reported “a reported $450,000 a day” for Las Vegas Sphere advertisements.
Democrats collectively spent $1.1 billion on aired advertising, AdImpact reported, only to be swept in almost every single competitive race.
University of Surrey American politics expert Mark Shanahan attributed the campaign’s failure to terrible messaging.
“Harris had too little time to introduce herself to America,” Shanahan claimed, despite Harris being vice president since 2021.
“She never really landed her messages on the economy with great clarity, and the one area we really thought would boost her, around reproductive rights, really didn’t get the expected cut-through with voters.”
“Once again, the Democrats underestimated the appeal of Trump,” Shanahan added. “He turns politics into a soap opera and it keeps many more than his MAGA loyalists tuned in. Allied to that, he offered simple messages: the economy is poor and he can fix it; and America’s troubles start at its borders, and he can fix that too.”
In her concession speech at Howard University Wednesday, Harris said Americans “must accept” the election result, adding: “Hear me when I say the light of America’s promise will always burn bright.”
The Harris campaign has not responded to requests for comment about the reported debt.