In a Freedom Center Investigates report back in September, I wrote about Kamala’s history of wasteful spending and luxurious living.
“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.
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.
This time around it was private jets and celebrities. As the cash flow increased, so did the spending.
There’s an incredible line from the New York Times report on Kamala’s campaign spending.
“There is not a single expenditure in a different spot that would have changed the outcome of the race,” said Bakari Sellers, a close ally of Ms. Harris and a former lawmaker in South Carolina. In fact, Mr. Sellers said, the campaign faced an unusual problem: “We had so much money it was hard to get it out the door.”
What a problem to have.
The Biden-Harris campaign (never has that hyphen been as relevant) raised $2.15 billion.
Kamala was blowing through $100 million a week. Where did that money go? The answer in a lot of organizations tends to be ‘consultants’, people put on staff because they’re somebody’s pals or politically connected.
Some media allies of Ms. Harris were also paid. Areva Martin, who hosts a talk show, was paid $200,000 as a media consultant, and she went on a battleground-state tour in October.
Roland Martin, who hosts his own streaming programming and runs a media company called Nu Vision Media, received $350,000 in September for a “media buy” that he said was for advertising.
“It should have been a hell of a lot more,” Mr. Martin said in a brief interview. “More should have been spent on Black-owned media.” Mr. Martin interviewed Ms. Harris in October.
Ms. Harris’s campaign also made two $250,000 donations to National Action Network, the organization led by the Rev. Al Sharpton. Mr. Sharpton interviewed Ms. Harris on MSNBC in October.
That’s chump change when you’re spending $100 million a week, but that is also how you end up spending $100 million a week. A lot of ads. A lot of people making money from buying ads. And from everything else.
The good news is they did manage to get all that money out the door. And now they need more.