Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign touts its refusal to accept contributions from corporate PACs, all while taking donations from corporate executives.
In the ten days after Harris officially took the reins of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign on July 21, dozens of corporate executives showered her with tens of thousands of dollars, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records reviewed by Daily Caller News Foundation. Despite the corporate enthusiasm for Harris, the vice president has attempted to distance herself from big business, stating on her donation page that her campaign “does not accept contributions from corporations or their PACs.”
Banking, media, retail, pharmaceutical and tech executives are all well represented among the individuals who poured cash into the vice president’s campaign following the news of Biden’s withdrawal from the race, FEC records show. Executives at Amazon, Salesforce, Vox Media, Citigroup and Uber made maximum contributions to the Harris campaign within its first ten days.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings were among the first prominent tech leaders to throw their support behind Harris.
Hoffman, alongside some of Harris’ other deep-pocketed corporate donors, are reportedly attempting to get the vice president to dump Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, who has been aggressively pursuing antitrust cases. Google and Microsoft are among the tech giants Khan has gone after using her powers as head of the FTC.
Several Google and Microsoft executives donated to Harris during the first ten days of her official campaign, FEC records show.
Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud computing company Box, told Politico that Harris could represent a “reset” between the tech industry and the Democratic Party.
Harris’ promise mirrors a similar pledge she made during her 2020 presidential campaign where she said she’d reject corporate PAC donations, only to then accept donations from corporate PACs, the Washington Examiner reported. At the time, Harris explained that she would forgo cash from corporate PACs and lobbyists so that her “campaign would be powered by the people” and center their voices, according to archived campaign emails.
Despite Harris’ past populist assurances, parts of corporate America appear confident that the vice president will have their back if she’s elected.
“We endorse Kamala Harris’s election as President of the United States,” a group of 88 current and former top executives wrote in a letter shared with CNBC on Sept. 6. “Her election is the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy. With Kamala Harris in the White House, the business community can be confident that it will have a President who wants American industries to thrive.”
Signatories of the letter included former executives from American Express, Bank of America, Sony Entertainment, Ford, Fox, PepsiCo and Zillow. Current executives from those companies all donated to Harris in the first ten days of her campaign, per FEC records.
“I think that money has had such an outside influence on politics, and especially with the Supreme Court determining Citizens United, which basically means that big corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money influencing our campaigns, right?” Harris said in a 2018 interview, explaining why she would reject corporate money. “We’re all supposed to have an equal vote, but money has now really tipped the balance between an individual having equal power in an election to a corporation. So I’ve actually made a decision since I had that conversation that I’m not going to accept corporate PAC checks. I just, I’m not.”
Harris’ 2024 campaign has accepted donations from executives at Amazon, Apple, CBS, Chevron, NBC, Comcast, CVS, Disney, Deloitte, ESPN, General Motors, Pfizer, Intel, Verizon and Sony, among several other large corporations, according to FEC records.
In addition to purportedly refusing corporate PAC money, the Harris campaign also claims to reject funds from lobbyists. Her campaign, however, took donations from dozens of lobbyists in its first ten days.
The Harris campaign did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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