Former Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris paid Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions $1 million — only one example of millions the campaign spent on numerous entertainers during the VP’s failed presidential bid.
According to a Washington Examiner report, the Harris campaign paid Winfrey’s company the exorbitant amount on October 15, following a star-studded town hall that Winfrey hosted for the vice president in September.
Winfrey also appeared at Harris’s final rally in Philadelphia on the eve of Election Day, with the talk-show star offering a rare presidential candidate endorsement.
“We’re voting for values and integrity,” said Winfrey at the rally. “We’re voting for healing over hate.”
Harris has reportedly spent six figures on the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast.
However, Winfrey wasn’t the only star Harris’s campaign spent significant amounts of money on. The Washington Examiner report also revealed that the campaign spent big on the podcast “Call Her Daddy.”
“A source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner that the Harris campaign spent six figures on building a set for Harris’s appearance on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper,” wrote the Examiner. “The interview came out in October and was reportedly filmed in a hotel room in Washington, D.C.”
According to a New York Post report, the campaign additionally spent up to $20 million on concerts in swing states on Election Night, a sum that could have been more if an Alanis Morissette planned performance hadn’t been scrapped.
The campaign had seven swing-state concerts on Monday, noted the report, including performances by Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Lady Gaga in Philadelphia, Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, and Katy Perry in Pittsburgh. 2 Chainz also performed at a rally three days prior to the election in Atlanta.
“Money can’t buy you love or a good candidate,” said GOP political strategist Brad Todd to the Examiner about the significant spending.
“Advertising is a pretty important source of information for swing voters,” said Todd. “It no doubt matters, but it’s not enough. It doesn’t matter if you have the wrong message and it’s not delivered in a compelling way. Her campaign was missing any effort to break with the unpopular administration she has been a part of.”
Harris’s Campaign Blasted for Spending $1 Billion and Still Losing
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s teams are blaming each other for wasting over a billion dollars in donor cash on her disastrous presidential campaign.
Since the historic victory of Donald Trump, Democrats have been in chaos over how their substantial war chest wasn’t able to ward off the Republican — who they consider a ‘threat to democracy’ — and who spent a small fraction of the amount.
Harris took over after Biden’s disastrous June debate
The poor performance of President Joe Biden in his June debate with Donald Trump that led to his being pressured to drop out late in the election cycle by leaders of the Democratic Party is to blame for the loss of Harris, say her aides.
However, Biden’s staff say the vice president ran a three-month, terrible campaign and wasted millions of dollars from their leading donors.
“How did you spend $1 billion and not win? What the f***?” said a former staffer for Biden, infuriated by excuses from the Harris team.
An analysis by the Financial Times revealed that Harris’s campaign spent $1.2 billion on the campaign, while Trump’s campaign spent $750 million.
But some indications show the race was much more costly than that.
The Harris campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and affiliated PACs amassed over $2.3 billion in political contributions.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team, the Republican National Committee, and affiliated PACs raised $1.8 billion.
After raising almost $4.2 billion, the candidates spent a total of $3.5 billion on the race for the presidency, making it the costliest contest ever held, according to analysis.
Despite spending less, Trump defeated Harris in the popular and electoral vote—something the Republican Party hasn’t done in decades.
As a result, a firestorm of criticism has broken out in the top ranks of the Democrat Party.
Workers in the White House and on the campaigns are continuing the blame game ruthlessly over whether the vice president or president actually dropped the ball.
Biden and Harris’s campaigns spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads touting their message, to no avail.
Not only did their campaign screech to a halt in defeat, but to add insult to injury, the operation is also in debt—per Politico—to the tune of $20 million.
Sources on the call told Axios that Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon almost burst into tears during a staff call Thursday evening.
“I don’t like emotion; I don’t do that,” said Dillon. She then began to become emotional.
“You are great people who have done a great thing, and you came really close.”
Though VP Harris’s campaign only started after Joe Biden stepped aside on July 21, the Wall Street Journal reported that within one week, she had $200 million pledged to it.
Liberal donors believed she could pick up the mantle left behind by Biden and run a campaign focused on halting Trump’s return, and they flocked to her.
Harris’s campaign painted Trump as a fascist, anti-democracy demagogue not fit to wield the reins of the most powerful office on the planet was the central feature of both the Harris and Biden campaigns.
Kamala Harris’s campaign blew through over $650 million in ads from July 22 until Election Day.
Meanwhile, Trump spent around $380 million on ads during the same period, per AdImpact.
The GOP effectively made gains in every demographic, according to voting data.
Trump made sizeable gains with younger, urban voters, Latinos, and Black men, while Harris secured many college-educated voters.
