Top Democratic Party officials are expressing concern that the Harris-Walz campaign ended with tens of millions of dollars in debt, a financial burden that could now fall on the party. Officials are closely examining how the campaign allocated its funds, having raised over $1 billion before Election Day. FEC filings have already revealed significant payments to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, along with tens of millions spent on events and social media influence.
Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Fox News, citing Axios, that the potential debt from the Harris campaign could hinder the Democratic National Committee’s efforts to rebuild the party following the election results last week. “How do you raise a historic amount of money and not win a single swing state?” one Harris aide told Axios. “The honest answer is: I don’t know. It seems we lost the national narrative, and that’s what we need to diagnose.”
That scenario never came to pass, as it quickly became clear that President-elect Trump had secured a decisive victory, Fox noted. FEC filings reveal that the Harris campaign made two $500,000 payments to Oprah Winfrey’s production company, Harpo, on October 15—just a month after Winfrey appeared with Harris at a town hall event and weeks before she joined Harris on stage at a Philadelphia rally before Election Day. While Winfrey herself denied accepting any payment, Harpo claimed the payments were meant to cover production costs for the surrounding event.
The campaign also allocated $4 million to Village Marketing Agency, a company that connects clients with social media influencers. A host of celebrities joined Harris on the campaign trail, including Beyoncé, Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Bruce Springsteen. The Washington Examiner also reported that the Harris campaign spent over $12 million on digital media consultants. The Harris campaign also “spent six figures on building a set for Harris’s appearance on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast with host Alex Cooper,” the outlet noted.
FEC records show the campaign spent at least $15 million on “event production,” with many of the payments coinciding with high-profile events and concerts featuring celebrity attendees or performers. Lindy Li, a surrogate who raised millions for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, spoke out on Saturday on Fox News after feeling misled by the Harris campaign.
In an interview with Fox and Friends Weekend co-host Will Cain, Li explained that the campaign’s false promises led her to contribute large sums of money, ultimately supporting what became Harris’s “epic disaster” of an election loss to Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
“This is just an epic disaster. This is a one-billion-dollar disaster,” Li said, referencing how the losing Harris campaign blew through $1 billion in fundraising and ended up with millions of dollars in debt. “It’s incredible, and I raised millions of that. I have friends that I have to be accountable to and to explain what happened because I told them it was a margin of error race,” she added.
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