Vice President Kamala Harris’s historic — and unsuccessful — $1.5 billion spending spree in the 2024 election is poised to influence how future candidates use their coffers, namely when it comes to avoiding her mistake of running a celebrity-centric campaign.
The Harris campaign burned through the money in just 15 weeks, operating on a highly compressed schedule on the heels of President Joe Biden dropping out of the race and passing the torch to the vice president. Following her loss to President-elect Donald Trump, Harris has come under significant scrutiny over her campaign’s payments to celebrities and various companies for events, particularly after a Washington Examiner report in November that cited a million-dollar disbursement to Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions.
