Kamala’s Money Machine - “Kamala demands a life of luxury.”
“Kamala demands a life of luxury,” a former aide revealed. “She treats the campaign like a personal checking account to fund a lifestyle she aspires to,” another aide warned.
“Staff has always worried about Kamala’s spending, but she is adamant about using campaign money as she wants,” that aide on her former Senate campaign said.
“She wants to live the life of someone in the White House,” a strategist described Kamala in 2015, “and she hasn’t even won the Senate yet. Her hanging around the president and first lady”, referencing the Obamas, “it’s gotten her hooked. She thinks it’s her birthright and it’s not.”
Kamala was raising and spending massive amounts of campaign cash. Much of it on herself.
While Kamala falsely claimed that she was raised in “a middle-class household”, she was actually the “privileged child of foreign grad students” who traveled the world, and grew up surrounded by wealth. Her career as a prosecutor failed to satisfy her taste for luxury so she turned to Willie Brown: the first in a series of men who would support her in high style.
San Francisco Mayor Brown put her on taxpayer-funded boards where she earned $400,000 for showing up, flew her around the country and the world, and gifted her a BMW. Kamala mingled with Nob Hill elites in San Francisco and posed “in a fashion spread, shown wearing $565 boots, a $975 skirt and a $1,095 coat, all made by Burberry” difficult to imagine on a Deputy DA’s salary while living it up and partying in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Brown also bought her a political career and her lifestyle by backing her run for the city’s DA. Despite polling in the single digits, money from San Francisco’s elites poured into the unknown candidate’s campaign. At events, her finance director described how “we’d go around with the bag and collect the money.” Kamala’s fundraising blew through the spending cap leading to a record fine. She paid the fine with the campaign’s pocket change and bought her first election.
The state attorney general’s race was a replay with Kamala behind in the polls and up against a well known DA, but backed by endless money from wealthy donors. And by the time Kamala ran for Senate, she had learned to live large on the millions coming in from donors.
But Democrats were paying closer attention and were getting uncomfortable with the spending.
The National Journal ran a story describing Kamala’s habit of staying at luxury hotels. The campaign spent $1,886 to put Kamala up for the night in D.C.’s St. Regis hotel as part of a string of stays at out-of-state luxury hotels in Houston, Chicago and D.C. for a state race.
Tens of thousands of dollars were being spent on “luxury car services” like a private car service in Martha’s Vineyard, and first class airline tickets. The campaign had burned millions of dollars even though Kamala had no actual Republican opponent and she couldn’t possibly lose.
But Kamala had learned the lessons that Willie Brown had taught her in San Francisco.
Politics was not about change, but luxury. Brown had claimed that he needed to drive luxury cars because “my body would reject a Plymouth.” Kamala’s body would reject anything less than a thousand dollar hotel room, a BMW, a first class airline seat or a $975 skirt. Donor money from the elites allowed her to buy access to their lifestyle in exchange for buying access to her.
Disgusted aides and campaign workers headed for the exit. In a familiar story, the National Journal mentioned that she was on her “second campaign manager and third finance director”. A strategist complained that “she’s spending that way to support her diva lifestyle.”
After raising over $15 million and outspending her opponent almost 4 to 1, while enjoying the lavish perks of the lifestyle donors were buying her, she became Senator Kamala Harris.
When she ran for president, the donors who had invested so much stayed with her and blew through $40 million to finance a trainwreck of a presidential campaign abandoned by her top staffers and eventually by Kamala herself who never actually competed in a single primary.
Once again, Kamala had been spending beyond the campaign’s means. And while that had not been a fatal problem four years earlier when she had no real opponent, it left her with no cash on hand for the actual business of campaigning as the primaries loomed on the horizon.
By September, there was no money left for TV ads and by December and, the campaign couldn’t even afford to buy Facebook ads.
“Where did the $35 million go?” CNN quoted someone “close to Harris”.
While the millions in donor money didn’t buy Kamala the top spot, it did buy her the vice presidency. What actually made Biden pick Kamala as his VP? Kamala’s fundraiser for Biden topped every other Democrat fundraiser, including Hillary’s, with the exception of Obama’s.
The failed presidential candidate raised at least $5 million for Biden. CNBC noted, “her addition to the ticket could help push the Biden campaign over the top in the cash race with Trump.”
In 2024, donors, many of whom had backed Kamala, revolted against Biden’s debate performance, ousted the party’s actual nominee, and replaced him with their protege.
The media gushed over the announcement that Kamala had raised $81 million in the first 24 hours and $200 million in the first week after the donor coup. It glowingly reports each fundraising total as if it were a validation of the candidate rather than an indictment of a political campaign fueled by donors, not the 14 million who actually voted for Biden in the primaries.
And it asks no questions about where the money is coming from. Or where it’s going.
Once again a Kamala campaign is outraising her opponent. Projections are that she will raise $1 billion between the donor coup and Election Day. But Kamala has already burned through about half of the half a billion dollars she raised. The money machine is grinding up millions.
Kamala’s political career was never powered by charisma or conviction, but by cash.
Her current race, like her past races for DA, AG and Senate, is mired in contradictory messaging, no coherent platform and a dysfunctional campaign. Kamala has never learned how to run for office. What saw her through each race were political connections, identity politics and, above all else, the wealthy donors that invested unlimited amounts in her career.
While the donor coup against Biden was underway, Kamala spoke at a San Francisco fundraiser. “It all started here,” she said, mentioning Mark Buell, her original fundraising chair who had gone around “with the bag” to “collect the money” and who had helped her raise “a whopping $250,000”.
Kamala quoted an elected official “I’m not going to say who, but it was a big personality who we all know” who told her “show me you can raise some money, and maybe people will take you seriously.” That “big personality” was Willie Brown whose name she could only mention in code
The donors in the room, Kamala said, “have been on this journey with me from the very beginning.”
A few days before the donor coup against democracy, the New York Times quoted Mark Buell criticizing Biden and asking, “Do we have time to put somebody else in there?”
That someone was always going to be Buell’s protege and that of the money machine.
“We thought we’re ready for the next generation,” Buell told ABC News, and claimed that there would be a “data driven” process “to see what horse we’re going to ride to the finish line.”
The data was dollars and cents. Kamala had sold herself to donors a long time ago. The donors got America and Kamala got a BMW, a few outfits and a night at the St. Regis.
