Vice President Harris is still pumping Democratic donors for cash weeks after her blowout election loss — but its leaving supporters spent, critics said.
“With Trump nominating MAGA loyalists left and right, there is nothing more important than making sure we can fight back and hold him accountable,” read an email from Kamala HQ which The Post received nearly three weeks after election day. “That’s why we need you to step up today. Yes, today.”
“Our records show that you haven’t pitched in to support our Harris Fight Fund program yet,” the missive scolded. “We know the election didn’t turn out as we’d hoped, but we’re not backing down.”
Harris raised $1.5 billion and blew it all in just 15 weeks of campaigning, finishing the race with around $20 million in debt, insiders told Politico — a claim the Harris campaign has denied.
The nonstop panhandling sends the wrong message and is alienating voters, party poohbahs said.
“Getting fundraising requests after any candidate has lost, when they admit that they are still millions of dollars in debt, having blown through over a billion dollars … is especially galling,” Democratic strategist Jon Reinish told The Post.
“When I got yet another request form the Harris campaign for me to pony up. Quiet frankly I thought it was insulting.”
The issue is likely to be a major concern for the incoming chair of the Democratic National Committee, who will become the de facto leader of the party after President Biden leaves office.
That election is scheduled for Feb 1. Among the leading contenders so far are Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor and past Democratic presidential candidate.
A full Kamala campaign autopsy must be at the top of the agenda for whoever is next chosen to lead the party, longtime Democratic insider James Carville told The Post.
“Many people are asking questions and there should probably be some kind of an audit,” Carville said, adding the effort needed to go well beyond Federal Election Commission spending disclosures and focus on “more granular and much more detailed” spending decisions.
In the weeks since her loss, Harris’ profligate spending has raised eyebrows in Democratic circles.
Among the more notable expenditures were $1 million to Oprah’s Harpo Productions; $900,000 to advertise on the outside screen of the Las Vegas Sphere; $500,000 to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and millions on private jets and luxury hotels.
More than half a billion dollars went to just four well-connected Democratic media consulting shops, according to records and reports.
None of Harris’ funding emails mention any of the spending or the campaign committee’s alleged financial woes.
“People are going to want to know what vendors got what money and what did they do,” Carville said. “When you have an airplane crash people don’t say, let’s look forward, not look back — no you look into what happened, was it a mechanical failure, or a weather thing or a hydraulic issue. The greatest teacher in the world is mistakes.”
