Vice President Kamala Harris just inherited President Joe Biden’s $96 million campaign war chest.
It only took a few hours for Harris to assume the Biden-Harris campaign’s finances and the president’s fundraising apparatus—including the key joint fundraising committees, the super engines behind presidential campaigns—in her newly launched presidential bid.
These are the vehicles through which Biden was raising major, high-dollar donations.
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The Biden campaign is now the Harris campaign, according to newly updated FEC documents. She also now helms the joint fundraising committees, whose names were changed from Biden Victory to Harris Victory on Sunday, according to other FEC documents. The same was true for the Biden Action Fund, now the Harris Action Fund.
The vice president had previously shared that authorized committee with Joe Biden as his running mate.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris share an authorized campaign committee, and they’ve just amended the paperwork to drop Biden off the ticket and change the name to ‘Harris for President,’” campaign finance expert Brendan Fischer from the Campaign Legal Center told the Daily Beast shortly after the news broke.
“This means that Harris now controls the $96 million in the former Biden-Harris campaign’s account,” he said, adding the move strikes him as “legally permissible.”
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in Delaware at the Hotel DuPont.
Drew Angerer/GettyHowever, where things get tricky is around Republican promises to hit what was formerly the Biden campaign with legal challenges.
“GOP attorney Charlie Spies recently floated an argument in the Wall Street Journal that a strict textual reading of the FEC’s regulations would bar Harris from accessing these funds, but his reading is at odds with how the FEC has long interpreted its rules,” Fischer explained.
“Republican-aligned groups might file a complaint about this transfer,” he added, “but it is unlikely that any such complaint would be resolved before the election.”
Should someone else become the nominee, then there’s a much higher likelihood that money would be frozen up upon a legal challenge, thanks to precedent in campaign finance law.
Biden became the king of campaign cash once he was able to use his joint fundraising committee this year, as the Daily Beast previously reported.
However, since Trump’s May guilty verdict in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial, his campaign has seen a surge in donations, allowing him to rebound from a serious cash deficit.
Yet the newly minted Harris campaign saw its own $8 million uptick in donations in the immediate hours after the news broke that Biden was stepping aside, according to the Daily Mail.
Harris also locked up the immediate support of Biden’s top finance official on the campaign.
“Let’s do this,” Rufus Gifford, the finance chair, posted on X. “The mission is clear and we are going to make history in 106 days by electing @KamalaHarri President of the United States.”
In the most telling bit from his post, Gifford promised the money will all go to Harris if voters donate today.
“Please give what you can today,” he added, “(money given here will be used 100% to elect Kamala Harris President).”
