In a twist that may come to define the Harris-Walz campaign, it’s been revealed that Kamala Harris’s presidential bid racked up a whopping $20 million in debt during its final days.
Despite raising over $1 billion, the campaign blew through nearly every penny and still ended in the red. According to sources close to the campaign, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s campaign chair, prioritized high-cost celebrity concerts with the likes of Katy Perry, Lizzo, and Bruce Springsteen—“all Jen’s idea,” according to one staffer. It seems “Campaign Finance 101” took a back seat to red-carpet events, leaving the Harris team in serious debt and scrambling to pay overdue bills.
Kamala Harris’s campaign ended with at least $20 million in debt, per two sources familiar. Harris raised over $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16.
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) November 7, 2024
The spending didn’t stop there. The campaign burned through $1.37 billion on political ads alone, outspending Trump and the GOP by $460 million. Between July 22 and Election Day, the seven battleground states saw a record-breaking $1.8 billion in ad spending. In Pennsylvania alone, Harris outspent Trump by nearly $262 million. Yet, despite all this money spent, she failed to carry the Keystone State—just one of many strategic losses that left Democrats wondering where it all went wrong.
Ok so this just got very explosive. A Kamala campaign staffer who saw these posts called me just now and said there is a massive scandal here worthy of an audit.
The $20 million debt thing is real. Rob Flaherty, this staffer said, is currently shopping around the Kamala… https://t.co/7EJ9ruKQzs
— Matthew Boyle (@mboyle1) November 7, 2024
To add salt to the wound, Harris’s campaign prioritized issue-heavy ads on taxation, with nearly 500,000 airings covering 75% of the ad space on the topic. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign focused on immigration, airing over 237,000 ads, a message that evidently resonated in states like Texas, where border security is paramount. The glaring misalignment in messaging may well have contributed to Harris’s loss in blue-leaning states and counties that hadn’t voted Republican in decades.
Even Harris’s appeal to key Democratic demographics fell flat. The campaign’s overspending and questionable priorities did little to win over the Latino and Black voters who had been vital to previous Democratic wins. In New York, Jewish voters swung toward Trump amid rising concerns about anti-Semitism on liberal college campuses. And in Michigan, Harris’s attempt to appease Muslim voters backfired, with Dearborn—home to the nation’s largest Muslim population—going red.
For all the campaign’s spending and star-studded rallies, Harris ultimately failed to connect with the everyday voters hit hardest by the Biden administration’s policies. Her team even resorted to auctioning off the campaign’s email list to try and recover some of the funds wasted on concerts and pricey ad buys. One staffer openly blamed O’Malley Dillon, saying, “People didn’t like working with her,” describing her as a “gatekeeper” who ran Biden’s campaign 2.0 instead of allowing Harris to have her own voice.
Unsurprisingly, the Trump camp had a field day with the Harris campaign’s “cash flow issues,” pointing to “strange financial activities” and a string of last-minute check cuttings as evidence of desperation. MAGA Inc.’s Kaelan Dorr even speculated that the campaign barely held it together financially in its final days.
In a fitting conclusion to this high-spending, low-return endeavor, the Democrats’ Florida spending dropped to under $1 million in the final 60 days—virtually conceding the state to Trump, who won it handily. The massive outpouring of cash, the rockstar concerts, and the barrage of ads all ultimately led nowhere, leaving Democrats not just with a stunning loss but with some serious financial clean-up in the aftermath.
