Kamala's Campaign Spending Shouldn't Have Been A Surprise

They had a staff of 12 to run a twitter feed? https://t.co/yttkQdCjl6

— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) November 8, 2024

On October 16, I put up an entry with links to post-mortems of Kamala's 2019 campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination. We may recall that she withdrew on December 3 of that year, before the Iowa caucuses and before any of the primaries. One link from 2015 went back even farther to review her pattern of spending, which looks like it's been consistent throughout her political career:

California’s top Senate candidate Kamala Harris has been using her campaign account to fund stays in upscale hotels and first-class airfares during her nearly five-year tenure as state attorney general.

A review by The Hill of California campaign finance records reveals that Harris’s expenditures follow a pattern: The Democratic candidate regularly charges thousands of dollars in luxury travel and hotels to her campaign.

. . . While the Harris campaign’s spending has come under scrutiny this election cycle — most recently in a National Journal report on luxury travel — The Hill’s investigation reveals that these expenditure patterns are consistent from January 2011 through the present.

In a standard trip, for example, Harris billed her campaign $2,482.70 in January 2013 for Delta Airlines “airfare for candidate from Washington D.C./campaign events/Presidential Inauguration,” according to state records.

On that same trip Harris stayed in D.C.’s upscale St. Regis hotel, billing her campaign $3,434.74 for a four-night stay, a nightly rate of $858.69.

Questions about Kamala's campaign spending, in other words, are nothing new. The Washington Examiner suggests that there's a great deal we have yet to learn about her 2024 campaign spending:

The Harris campaign declined to comment on its finances. A fuller portrait will be public after the election, as the Federal Election Commission mandates post-general election reports for candidates within 30 days.

In mid-October, the Harris campaign disclosed that it had spent over $880 million this election, almost $526 million greater than the roughly $354 million that the Trump campaign had disclosed spending, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of federal filings. Much of the Harris campaign’s spending was allocated for digital media advertising, polling, and travel from state to state, including to a private jet company called Advanced Aviation.

Payroll and the taxes that accompanied it accounted for $56.6 million of the Harris campaign’s spending. In comparison, the Trump campaign reported spending $9 million on payroll — employing hundreds fewer staff members.

. . . “Event production” was also a staple spending area of the Harris campaign, which notably hosted a star-studded lineup of musicians from Lady Gaga to Katy Perry for an election eve rally.

. . . A source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner that the Harris campaign spent six figures on building a set for Harris’s appearance on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast with host Alex Cooper. The interview came out in October and was reportedly filmed in a hotel room in Washington, D.C.

What puzzles me is that this has come as such a surprise, when excessive spending was simply part of the Harris package from the start. Via the New York Post:

Lindy Li, who sits on the Democratic National Committee finance committee, raked Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign over the coals, branding it a “$1 billion disaster” and called for accountability after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory,

Li at one point dropped an f-bomb during her television hit while venting that President Biden’s late-stage decision to drop out was a “f— you” to Democrat. She contended that she and others had been misled about Harris’ chances in the election.

“The truth is this is just an end epic disaster, this is a $1 billion disaster,” Li bluntly told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday.

Li begins to trace the problem back to its origin, at least in part:

On Saturday, Li ripped into the way in which Biden went down, suggesting that his rapid endorsement of Harris was an “f you” to his fellow Democrats. Fox News censored her accidentally dropping the f-bomb on air and Li later restrained herself from using it again.

“I actually think President Biden, the whole endorsing her 30 minutes after he dropped out, I think that was a big, ‘F you’ to the party. ‘If you don’t want me, here’s somebody you may not like, deal with it,’” Li said.

“Kind of like sticking it to the man.”

. . . Li groused that she was “misled” about Harris’ chances by top brass, including campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.

“I was promised… Jen O’Malley Dillon promised all of us that Harris would win,” she complained. “She even put videos out saying that Harris would win. I believed her, my donors believed her, and so they wrote massive checks. I feel like a lot of us were misled.”

So the problem goes back to Biden, but Biden also chose Kamala as his running mate. And as we see here, she was a known quantity; her 2019 campaign was an expensive disaster just like her 2024 campaign. Biden was allowed to get away with that choice and put her in as an "insurance policy" -- but let's reflect a moment. Wasn't Biden himself a known quantity? His 2020 basement campaign was at minimum a tacit acknowledgement that his condition couldn't stand much public exposure, and we still have a lot to learn about how this was concealed, and for how long.

Nothing about the whole 2024 Democrat campaign should have been a surprise to anyone. If Nancy Pelosi was able to bully Joe into withdrawing in July, she could have done it far earlier. Why didn't she?