The Democratic National Committee quietly funneled more than $20 million in donations to cover Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign debts while leading donors to believe their money was going toward future elections, according to a report.
Harris’s team sent nearly 100 fundraising emails this year on the DNC’s behalf to urge donors to chip in, with a February email promising that donations would be used to “work immediately toward winning the next set of elections.” None of the solicitations disclosed that the raised funds were essentially earmarked to pay off leftover expenses from Harris’s $1.5 billion failed presidential campaign, the New York Times reported.
“Convincing donors, both big and small, to pay for debts is typically a tough sell,” the Times noted.
Federal records show that the DNC has covered $20.5 million in Harris’s old bills—even though, in the days after the election, Harris’s team insisted that there would be no bills. The campaign’s chief financial officer, Patrick Stauffer, said in November that “there will be no debt” on the DNC’s or Harris’s post-election filings.
“The private agreement was this,” the Times report went on: “The party would pick up the tab for any outstanding 2024 bills, allowing Ms. Harris to claim she did not end the race in debt. In turn, Ms. Harris would raise the money to cover all of those leftover costs, leaving the party whole financially as it sought to navigate the second Trump era.”
While the DNC and Harris struck the arrangement before Ken Martin became DNC chairman this year, Martin has proceeded with the scheme, which is corroborated by four people familiar with the deal as well as Federal Election Commission filings, according to the Times.
The news comes as the DNC has already been reeling for months from financial woes and bitter infighting. A Politico report earlier this month found that the DNC “wildly trails” its Republican counterpart by nearly all fundraising metrics, as donors view the Democratic Party as “rudderless, off message and leaderless.”
“By the end of June, the RNC had $80 million on hand, compared to $15 million for the DNC,” Politico reported. The fundraising gap has only widened since then, with the DNC reportedly having less cash this summer than at any point in the past five years.
Many Democrats, meanwhile, have become increasingly frustrated with Martin’s leadership. In June, one DNC member called Martin “weak and whiny,” while another said the chairman has been “invisible.” The committee ousted vice chair David Hogg in June, after Martin blasted Hogg’s $20 million scheme to fund primary challenges against what he called the party’s “ineffective, asleep-at-the-wheel” incumbents. The turmoil escalated when two of the party’s most influential labor leaders quit their DNC posts, citing the party’s direction under Martin.
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