Kamala Harris ended her 2024 presidential campaign in stunning fashion, leaving Democrats $20 million in debt.
But her defeated campaign’s joint fundraising committee is still charging supporters for recurring donations set up during the vice president’s bid for a promotion. This is evident from a new report from Politico.
And many feel that seeing continued charges on their credit cards would add to the already painful loss.
The Harris Victory Fund did not request express permission from donors to continue taking money after the 2024 election on November 5, 2024. Instead, an email claims they would continue to see the charge “until you contact us recording’ to stop it.
An aide who worked on former Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign says the allegations are “super shady” and called it a kind of “grift.”
They revealed how Romney’s campaign immediately canceled all recurring donations just days after his election loss to President Barack Obama.
“These people didn’t sign up to pay the bills in January,” the former Romney aide claimed.
Donors who set up recurring contributions to Vice President Kamala Harris’ Victory Fund for her 2024 presidential bid are still facing charges two months after her loss to Donald Trump in November.
The move is also seen as tone-deaf and “out of touch” as Harris has driven her party into massive debt and racked up a huge bill after taking over President Joe Biden’s campaign.
Typically, campaigns are expected to stop recurring donations once their bid for office ends – whether in victory or defeat.
A Democratic National Committee official explained to Politico that the Harris Victory Fund no longer exists.
They claim that contributions collected for Harris’ campaign through recurring charges during the 2024 presidential race are now being transferred to the DNC “to help Democrats across the country rebuild the party.”
“It’s foolish, out of reach, and needlessly takes advantage of our most loyal supporters,” one Democrat told Politico as he shared screenshots of the charges on their accounts that continued into the new year.
Donors have spent $4.7 billion supporting both the Democratic and Republican ticket for the 2024 presidential election.
Federal Election Commission data shows that Harris and her Democratic-allied groups have raised about $2.9 billion compared to Republicans who raised $1.8 billion in support of Trump’s third consecutive bid for the White House.
Harris’ campaign and the allied groups that backed it raised $2.9 billion to support her bid for the White House. Ultimately, she left the race with $20 million in debt
Mike Nellis, leader of the Democratic online fundraising firm Authentic, said that among the losing campaigns “there is an expectation that they are going to cut off recurring donations because they don’t have to.”
However, he admitted that there is some “comfort” in knowing that the committee is being pushed to donate the funds to the DNC, as long as they are transparent with their donors about where the money is going.
Recurring contributions are a common tactic in political campaigns to secure a stable budget before elections. Many candidates and the groups that support them are encouraging supporters to sign up for low recurring donations instead of higher, one-time contributions.