Kamala Harris raised more than $1 billion for her presidential campaign … which ultimately failed. In the afterglow of stunning defeat, some Democrats are now asking how she could have possibly spent anywhere near that much money and still lost her shot at the White House.
The Harris campaign finished out the race with at least $20 million in debt, two sources familiar told Politico’s Christopher Cadelago, who wrote on X Wednesday night that of the $1 billion Harris had raised, only $118 million remained in cash as of October 16.
With the realization that all of that spending ultimately accomplished very little and cost the party control of the White House and Senate (and maybe even the House), Democrats are now beginning to point fingers.
“We spent money in stupid ways because we had a really bad strategy,” a former consultant to the DNC told Puck’s Tara Palmeri. He cited money sent to fund Representative Colin Allred’s failed challenge against Texas Senator Ted Cruz, as well as money directed to help in Iowa, a state Democrats never, ever win.
“Instead of owning any mistakes, or being transparent about the voter data and strategies that were so obviously wrong, they shut off their Twitter account and are patting each other on the back,” the former consultant said. “We dug out of a deep hole but not enough.”
Inside Harris’s crumbled campaign, some feel that they were misled about her chances, and led to believe it would be a margin-of-error race. In reality, Trump blew apart Harris’s play for the blue wall states and beat her by more than four million votes.
“People are depressed and frustrated about the overconfident leadership of the campaign,” one staffer told Axios.
One Biden staffer put it more simply: “How did you spend $1 billion and not win? What the fuck?”
Harris’s campaign budget was closely guarded by campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, so it’s unclear exactly how funds were allocated. An official for the DNC said that the majority of campaign spending was toward major events, paid media, and Harris’s supposedly expansive ground game—one that ultimately didn’t drum up that many votes at all.
What’s clear is that Harris ran a very expensive campaign, one that dwarfed Donald Trump’s efforts. The campaign spent an average of $7.5 million a day in August, in comparison to the $2.7 million that Trump spent. In September, the Harris campaign spent $152 million on advertising, more than double the $63 million that Trump shelled out.
Unfortunately for Harris, dollars didn’t seem to translate into votes. And even after Harris lost, her campaign is still sending out slates of fundraising requests.
