Ahead of the vice president’s softball sit-down interview with the civil rights activist, the Harris-Walz campaign donated nearly $500,000 to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s nonprofit, National Action Network.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s team made two donations of $250,000 to Sharpton’s group on September 5 and October 1, respectively. According For the records of the Federal Election Commission.
The cash infusion came in the context of payments totaling $5.4 million to various Black and Latino activist organizations, as the campaign focused on increasing support among minority voters. Washington Free Beacon First reported the donation.
Available campaign finance records are current as of mid-October and do not yet disclose Harris’ team’s spending through the end of the 2024 election cycle.
Harris, 60, sat down with Sharpton, 70, for an MSNBC interview that aired on October 20, three weeks after her campaign’s donation to the National Action Network.
Sharpton praised Harris during the meeting, at one point comparing her to Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, who later unsuccessfully competed for the presidency in 1972.
During that interview on her “PoliticsNation” show, Harris also Sharpton highlights Complaints emerged that she was “too progressive”. The outgoing Vice President has a decades-long friendly relationship with the reverend.
In early October, Sharpton played a video wishing him a happy birthday and praising him as an “extraordinary leader” and “voice of truth”.
Sharpton has been a controversial figure for some of his inflammatory comments on race. In the early 1990s, he was quoted as describing the Jews as “diamond merchantRailing against “and”white intruder,
Harris and her campaign were eager to stop the bleeding among minorities, especially men. Black men chose President-elect Donald Trump by about 21%, as did 54% of Latino male voters. edison research Exit poll data.
Polls had projected Harris losing with those key groups of voters in the November 5 election.
Questions loom over the Harris-Walz campaign over how it spent its political cash, given that Harris dramatically outraised Trump and lost to him in all seven battleground states.
As of October 16, the Harris-Walz campaign had raised nearly $1 billion and spent about $880 million, according to FEC records. later reports indicated that the campaign finished with a margin of about $20 million in the November 5 election.
Including outside spending, Harris had more than $1.6 billion in support as of mid-October open secretIn contrast, the Trump campaign had raised about $382 million and had a combined cash on hand total of about $1 billion. Per OpenSecrets,
Harris’ campaign chest became so inflated that her team stopped boasting about its figures, apparently out of fear it might discourage donors or give her supporters a false sense of confidence .
This was revealed after Harris’s election defeat. Washington Examiner His campaign spent $1 million on one of Oprah Winfrey’s production companies and nearly six figures to build a set for the veep’s interview on the “Call Her Daddy” sex podcast.
Winfrey, 70, has refused He received any money from payments to his company Harpo Productions.
In addition to Sharpton’s National Action Network, the Harris campaign gave $2 million to the National Urban League, $150,000 to the Black Economic Alliance, and $120,000 to Casa in Action, among other minority activist groups.
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