In the waning days of President Joe Biden’s doomed reelection campaign, Californians were contributing a tepid $176,000 a day on average to his campaign. But the moment Vice President Kamala Harris took his place, donations from her home state skyrocketed tenfold, then remained buoyant, funneling into her war chest at roughly $1 million a day.
And Harris is coming back for more.
On Saturday, she will be in San Francisco, where she spent years as District Attorney, attending her second fundraiser here in two months, hosted by Alex Tourk, founder of a public affairs firm and a former aide to San Francisco mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom, now governor.
Harris’s astounding donation numbers through the end of August, released by the Federal Election Commission last week, appear to reaffirm the wisdom of Biden’s tortured decision to drop out in late July and reflect California’s financial influence over the presidential race that, with just five weeks until Election Day, remains in a dead heat between Democrat Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.
“The particularly sharp rise in contributions shows that Democrats like her are excited by her as a candidate and also think they have a real shot at winning,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor.
Trump’s financial support in the heavily Democratic Golden State, meanwhile, is a fraction of Harris’s, reflecting his measure of support at the ballot box here when he lost reelection to Biden in 2020. A third of California voters cast their ballots for Trump four years ago, and now as Trump faces Harris in his second attempt at another term, only a quarter of all the donations from Californians are going to Trump.
Corrin Rankin, vice chair of the California Republican Party, contends that Harris needs all that extra cash to compete with Trump’s name recognition.
“It’s a necessity for her to spend that money to get her name out there,” Rankin said. “She’s not a household name.”
Although the Democratic ticket has far out-raised the Trump-Vance ticket in California overall, Trump’s total number of monthly contributions here was higher for the months before July than the Biden campaign. In June, Biden’s campaign received about 57,000 contributions, and Trump received 66,000 from Golden State residents. Trump’s campaign numbers rose slightly for July and August, but after Harris’ ascendance, the number of Democratic contributions more than doubled in July and reached nearly 194,000 in August.
Some of the recent direct donors to Harris’s campaign — maxing out their contribution limits at $3,300 — include Hollywood celebrities Ellen Degeneres and Carol Burnett, along with Bay Area residents such as trial lawyer Jonathan Gertler, from San Rafael, and software engineer Karel Driesen, from Los Altos.
Gertler said he ultimately would have donated to Biden’s campaign had he remained in the race but it would have been a desperation move “without much hope that he would win.”
When Harris became the nominee, the longtime Democrat said, “I became not optimistic, but hopeful. I had more reason to …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
