Vice President Kamala Harris campaign, which spent $100 million per week during her condensed run for the presidency, is still flooding supporter’s inboxes with requests for cash.
That’s led to heightened scrutiny about how the campaign spent its record war chest and still ended up no match for President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA roadshow.
Among the eye-popping expenses was a $1 million paid to Oprah Winfrey’s production firm, Harpo Productions, for a town hall event she television star hosted with Harris in September.
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The full price tag for the event, meanwhile, was more than just the fee for Harpo: the New York Times, citing two people briefed on the details, reported Sunday that it amounted to to $2.5 million.
The full cost of the town hall is sure to further bewilder critics, who had already falsely accused Winfrey of pocketing the money herself.
“I was not paid a dime,” Winfrey wrote in an Instagram comment. “For the live-streaming event in September, my production company Harpo was asked to bring in set design, lights, cameras, crew, producers and every other item necessary (including the benches and the chairs we sat on) to put on a live production. I did not take any personal fee. However, the people who worked on that production needed to be paid. And were. End of story.”
Campaign finance law also prevents businesses from making campaign contributions or providing services to campaigns at below-market rates.
Millions were spent on other celebrity events and high profile concerts, with Lady Gaga and Beyoncé among those to appear for Harris. Their effectiveness is now in question.
Among other notable spending, according to the Times, was $2.5 million spent on three digital agencies that work with online influencers—Trump gained a significant amount of publicity stumping on bro-y and right wing podcasts for free.
There was also the $900,000 spent to reserve advertising space on Las Vegas’ Sphere during the final week of the campaign.
Unsurprisingly, consultants, hangers-on, and other Democrats came begging for cash, and the Harris campaign obliged.
To other party committees, like the Democratic Party in Philadelphia for example, a total of near $25 million was given.
Some Harris pals and allies got in on it, too.
Talk show host Areva Martin earned $200,000 as a media consultant and toured swing states for Harris in October, the Times said. Journalist and commentator Roland Martin, who hosts a streaming show for his Nu Vision Media, earned $350,000 in September for a “media buy,” telling the Times it was for advertising and that “more should have been spent on Black-owned media.”
The Times said that the Harris campaign likely spent close to $600 million on producing and buying media ads for television and digital.
But the paper also flagged a Washington Post report about memo from Future Forward, the top PAC backing Harris, which warned that, in the final month of the race, that her campaign was outspent by Trump’s on broadcast advertising.
The Democratic National Committee’s finance chair said he will “push for an introspective study and analysis” of how Harris’ campaign blew through $1.5 billion.
In a note to the party’s top fundraisers sent Friday, Chris Korge wrote the campaign getting routed by Trump in all seven swing states “shocked us all” and said the DNC will need to “take a hard look at how it is structured.”
While a Politico reporter previously said the Harris campaign ended with “at least $20 million in debt,” citing two sources, the campaign’s chief financial officer Patrick Stauffer told Bloomberg Friday that “there will be no debt” when the campaign and the DNC file their next disclosures on December 5.
But, debt or no debt, there are signs that cash is in short supply.
Politico reported Saturday that the Harris campaign stopped paying senior staff, surprising those who had earlier been told they would be paid until the end of the year.
The outlet also said it remains unclear where finances will end up since vendors are still sending in invoices for events and services from the latter days of the campaign.
Meanwhile, e-mails asking for donors to give to the “Harris Fight Fund” are still going out as spending decisions during the race are being re-litigated.
Harris did outperform in swing states over national results, which some of her allies have used to argue is proof she was an able campaigner.
“There is not a single expenditure in a different spot that would have changed the outcome of the race,” Bakari Sellers, a Harris ally former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives told the Times. “We had so much money it was hard to get it out the door.”
