Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised over $200 million since Biden’s resignation USA Elections

Just 100 days before the November 5 election, Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised $200 million (about €184 million) in a week, the same week that President Joe Biden announced Blanca’s withdrawal from the House race and proposed the current vice president of the United States as a candidate. In the first 24 hours after the president’s resignation just seven days ago…

100 days before the November 5 election, Kamala Harris’s campaign has raised $ 200 million (about € 184 million) in a week, the week in which President Joe Biden announced Blanca’s withdrawal from the House race and proposed the current vice president of the United States as a candidate. Just seven days ago, in the first 24 hours after the president’s resignation, Harris’s campaign raised $ 81 million, the most raised in a single day by any party. The financial success of the candidate for the Democratic nomination goes hand in hand with her return in the polls, which reduces the advantage that Republican candidate for re-election Donald Trump had over Biden, although Harris herself warned this Saturday at a rally that surveys still consider her “loser”.

The Democratic campaign, which announced its latest fundraising this Sunday, has reported that most of the donations, 66%, come from contributors who are new to this election cycle. More than 170,000 volunteers have joined Harris’s election machine to help the campaign with phone calls, polling and other voter recruitment activities.

“The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real, as are the fundamental tenets of this race: This election will be very close and will be decided by a small number of voters in a few states,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a statement. Future Forward, the Democrats’ largest super PAC, announced last week that it had secured $150 million in donor commitments in the first 24 hours after Biden withdrew and endorsed Harris.

For example, the enthusiasm generated by Harris’s jump into the fray explains why at this Saturday’s fundraising event in Pittsfield (Massachusetts), when Biden was still leading the Democratic candidacy, initial estimates of reaching $400,000 were widely exceeded in practice, registering 1.4 million dollars.

In addition to the substantial financial support for the campaign, Harris has benefited from thousands of female donors in the San Francisco area who have supported and promoted her throughout her career, but also from the support of big names in the Democratic Party such as Nancy Pelosi, speaker emeritus of the House of Representatives; the Senate majority leader, the influential Chuck Schumer; the Democratic minority leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries; former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But the final touch was the endorsement this Friday of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle.

Democratic House and Senate candidates say they have seen a surge in support for their campaigns since Harris emerged as the party’s potential challenger.

“criminal activist”

Meanwhile, given the Democrats’ spectacular start to the campaign, Trump and his team have stepped up their efforts to discredit Harris by presenting her as a “radical left-wing” politician. At a rally in St. Cloud (Minnesota), the Republican this Saturday called Harris a “crazy liberal”, accusing her of wanting to “defund the police” – movement Defund the Police Harris emerged in 2020 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd — and said she was an “absolute radical” on abortion rights, a key point of the vice president’s election program. At the rally, a video was shown describing her as “Kamala, the pro-criminal activist backed by the Minnesota Freedom Fund, who, according to the Republican campaign, “got rapists, assailants and criminals out of prison, now convicted, and returned them back to the streets.” Harris’s alleged laxity on crime is a key argument of Republicans.

Senator Tom Cotton, very close to Trump, also blamed Harris for colluding with Iran after the attack on the Druze town in the Golan Heights, which claimed the lives of 11 minors and which Israel attributes to Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite militia party obedient to Iran. “Clearly, (the attack) encourages Iran and terrorist groups like Hezbollah because they believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will continue to put more pressure on Israel than Iran and its terrorists who harass Israel with the declared goal of destroying it,” Cotton said. Speaking to CNN, the senator also blamed Harris for “many of the Biden administration’s worst decisions,” including the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, a recurring theme in speeches at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee two weeks ago.

However, some Republicans warn of the risk that personal attacks against Harris will backfire (indeed, the campaign has recommended moderation in misogynistic and racist comments). New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu said Saturday that Harris is in a “honeymoon” period that will likely last a month, but he also acknowledged that both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, should stop making personal attacks because they won’t motivate people to vote for them, lamenting that the Republican leader has missed opportunities to do so at previous campaign events.

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