The Harris-Walz campaign funneled some $500,000 to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s nonprofit, the National Action Network, prior to the vice president’s softball sit-down interview with the civil rights activist.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ team made two donations of $250,000 to Sharpton’s group on Sept. 5 and Oct. 1 respectively, according to Federal Election Commission records.
The cash flow came in the context of payments totaling $5.4 million to various black and Latino activist organizations as the campaign set its sights on galvanizing support among minority voters. The Washington Free Beacon first reported the donations.
Available campaign finance records are current through mid-October and do not yet reveal Harris’ team’s spending during the tail-end of the 2024 election cycle.
Harris, 60, sat down with Sharpton, 70, for an MSNBC interview that aired on Oct. 20, just shy of three weeks after the donations from her campaign to the National Action Network.
Sharpton heaped praise on Harris during the sit-down, at one point drawing parallels to Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress who later unsuccessfully vied for the presidency in 1972.
During that interview on his “PoliticsNation” show, Harris also glossed over Sharpton bringing up complaints that she was “too progressive.” The outgoing vice president has long had a friendly rapport with the reverend, dating back decades.
At the start of October, Sharpton played a video of her wishing him a happy birthday and hailing him as an “extraordinary leader” and “a voice of truth.”
Sharpton has been a controversial figure for some of his incendiary remarks on race. Back in the early 1990s, he was quoted as describing Jews as “the diamond merchants” and railing against “white interlopers.”
Harris and her campaign had been keen on stemming the hemorrhaging among minorities, particularly males. Black men opted for President-elect Donald Trump by about 21%, as did 54% of Latino male voters, per Edison Research exit poll data.
Polls had pegged Harris losing ground with those key groups of voters heading into the Nov. 5 election.
Questions have dogged the Harris-Walz campaign as to how it spent its political cash, given that Harris dramatically outspent Trump and lost all seven battleground states to him.
As of Oct. 16, the Harris-Walz campaign raked in about $1 billion and shelled out some $880 million, per FEC records. Subsequent reports have indicated that the campaign ended the Nov. 5 election at about $20 million in the hole.
When combined with outside spending, Harris had over $1.6 billion backing her as of mid-October, according to OpenSecrets. By contrast, the Trump campaign had raised about $382 million and had a total of about $1 billion in combined cash hauled in, per OpenSecrets.
Harris’ campaign war chest grew so much that her team stopped boasting about its figures, ostensibly fearing that it could dissuade donors or give her supporters a false sense of confidence.
Since Harris’ election defeat, it was revealed by the Washington Examiner that her campaign spent $1 million on one of Oprah Winfrey’s production companies and about six figures to create a set for the veep’s interview on the “Call Her Daddy” sex podcast.
Winfrey, 70, has denied she received any money from the payment to her company Harpo Productions.
In addition to Sharpton’s National Action Network, the Harris campaign had dolled out $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.
