Harris crosses half-billion donation milestone with convention
A third of those who contributed are first-time donors, and two-thirds women
Washington: Vice-President Kamala Harris’ campaign and its affiliates raised $82 million during the Democratic convention in Chicago last week, pushing their total fundraising haul to $540 million since President Joe Biden announced he’d step aside.
The amounts, detailed in a memo by Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, underscore the tailwind behind Harris that has reshaped the race against Donald Trump. The total raised in the past month is a record, the campaign said.
After Harris’ speech capping the convention on Thursday, the campaign also set an hourly record for contributions, according to the memo. The totals include the Harris campaign, the DNC and joint fundraising committees.
Women are powering the windfall. A third of those who contributed during the convention were first-time donors, and two-thirds were women, according to the memo.
Volunteers signed up for 200,000 shifts, as the campaign looks to convert momentum from the convention into grassroots efforts.
Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, will tour Georgia on Wednesday and Thursday. Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech on the economy Thursday, as well as appear at an event in Wisconsin later that day and another in Pennsylvania on Friday, according to his campaign.
Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority-owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, has given $10 million to the House Democrats’ largest super PAC this year. He’s also donated $19 million to Future Forward, the flagship super PAC supporting Harris, and $7 million to a super PAC associated with Everytown for Gun Safety.
Harris’s campaign appears to have energized large and small donors alike - a turnaround from the uncertain period after a disastrous Biden debate performance in June, when major donors reportedly halted fundraising.
It also appears to have mobilized what O’Malley Dillon called “a virtual army of volunteers,” with the convention seeing grassroots workers signing up in droves.
“Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s battleground infrastructure remains incredibly sparse,” she said.
Harris and Trump are neck and neck in the polls less than three weeks before their September 10 debate in Philadelphia.
Harris, 59, a former senator from California and prosecutor, left the Democratic convention in Chicago with momentum, having outraised Trump and erased the polling leads he enjoyed before she replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket.
Trump, whose campaign was thrown when Biden stepped aside, reported having $327 million cash on hand at the start of August.
Kennedy backs Trump
Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he is suspending his presidential race and is now supporting Trump, ending a long-shot campaign that had sought to offer voters an alternative to the major party candidates.
Kennedy’s speech saw him assail the Democratic Party at length for what he said was a political system he claimed is tilted unfairly against independent candidates.
“In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless systematic censorship,” Kennedy said in an address from swing-state Arizona.
Kennedy went on to praise the Republican nominee, saying they had met personally twice in recent weeks and that Trump had offered him a position in his administration. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, Kennedy said, refused to engage in similar bartering.
By dropping out and backing Trump over Harris, Kennedy is hoping to retain a foothold for his agenda — which includes vaccine skepticism, an isolationist foreign policy, and a focus on health — while shifting his role in the election from spoiler to kingmaker.
Kennedy later Friday joined Trump on the stage at the former president’s rally in Glendale, Arizona, where he was met with a standing ovation and shouts of “Bobby.”
Trump pledged that if reelected, he would create a new presidential commission on assassination attempts, including the one on him in July, and release all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy’s uncle, then-President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. The National Archives has said that nearly all of the records are available.
“Bobby and I will fight together to defeat the corrupt political establishment and return control of this country to the people and all who supported Bobby’s campaign, I very simply ask you join us in building this coalition,” Trump said.