Kamala Harris burned through $20 million on concerts, risking unpaid staff and vendors
Harris's campaign concerts, featuring high-profile artists, reportedly exhausted funds, leaving the campaign in debt and staff unpaid.
Kamala Harris had a spectacular concert eve on the election day on Monday night just before her sore loss to Donald Trump in the presidential race. The VP reportedly blew up $20 million on the concerts and now the staff and vendors fear they will not be paid for their services as the reports of the campaign being in debt emerge.
The defeated campaign’s members revealed to The Post that the concerts had emptied the coffers of the Democratic campaign. This was hinted at earlier as well when they cancelled one performance by ’90s alt-rock goddess Alanis Morissette to save some bucks, as reported by The New York Post.
The concert eve featured performances by artists such as Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Katy Perry in Pittsburgh and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia. For the eighth concert, 2Chainz joined Harris in Atlanta, three days prior to the election day, on November 2.
Two sources revealed that the concerts were Obama campaign alum Stephanie Cutter’s idea and were supported by fellow Obama alum David Plouffe.
One source revealed to the Post that Harris-Walz campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon approved the go-out-to-vote concert idea and was criticised internally for it. She did not want to approve it and sit on the idea for weeks before giving it a green signal. Another source emphasised if that was the case then she led the campaign right to increased production costs because “putting [concerts] together last minute makes [them] cost twice as much.”
The second source criticized Dana Rosenzweig, the campaign operations chief, suggesting she should have flagged concerns earlier in the planning process. However, a third source defended her, arguing that the responsibility for managing the campaign budget fell more on the budget team, not Rosenzweig. The second source quipped, “They said they were ‘spending to zero.’ I guess they overshot zero.”
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/kamala-harris-burned-through-20-million-on-concerts-risking-unpaid-staff-and-vendors-101731127735828-amp.html