100 days before the November 5 election, Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised $200 million [unos 184 millones de euros] in one week, the length of time since President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the race for the White House and proposed the current vice president of the United States as his candidate. In the first 24 hours since the president’s resignation, exactly seven days ago, Harris’s campaign collected 81 million, the highest amount raised by any of the parties in a single day. The financial success of the candidate for the Democratic nomination runs parallel to her comeback in the polls, narrowing the advantage that the Republican candidate for reelection, Donald Trump, had over Biden, although Harris herself warned this Saturday at a rally that the polls still give her a “loser.”
The Democratic campaign, which announced its latest fundraising totals on Sunday, said the bulk of donations, 66%, came from first-time contributors this election cycle. More than 170,000 volunteers have joined Harris’ campaign team to help with phone calls, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts.
“The momentum and energy behind Vice President Harris is real, as are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and 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 Democrat’s largest super PAC, announced last week that it had raised $150 million in donor commitments in the first 24 hours after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris.
The enthusiasm unleashed by Harris’s jump into the arena explains, for example, why at this Saturday’s fundraising event in Pittsfield (Massachusetts), scheduled when Biden was still leading the Democratic candidacy, the initial estimate of reaching $400,000 was greatly exceeded in practice, with $1.4 million being registered.
In her considerable financial support for the campaign, Harris has benefited from thousands of female donors from the San Francisco area, who have accompanied and promoted her throughout her career, but also from the backing of big names in the Democratic Party, such as Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emeritus of the House of Representatives; the Senate Majority Leader, the also 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 straw was the support of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, this Friday.
Democratic House and Senate candidates say they have also seen support for their campaigns rise since Harris emerged as the party’s likely front-runner.
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“Pro-crime activist”
Meanwhile, in light of the spectacular start to the Democrat’s campaign, Trump and his team have stepped up their efforts to discredit Harris by presenting her as a “radical left” politician. At a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, the Republican on Saturday called Harris a “liberal nutcase,” accused her of wanting to “defund the police” — the movement defund the police Harris’s campaign — which emerged in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 — said she was an “absolute radical” on abortion rights, a key plank of the vice president’s campaign platform. The rally featured a video describing her as “Pro-Crime Activist Kamala for Supporting Criminals Backed by the Minnesota Freedom Fund,” which the Republican campaign says “got now-convicted rapists, assaulters, and murderers out of prison and back on the streets.” Harris’s perceived laxity on crime is a key Republican argument.
Senator Tom Cotton, who is very close to Trump, even accused Harris of colluding with Iran after the attack on a Druze town in the Golan Heights, which claimed the lives of 11 children and which Israel attributes to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia party in Lebanon that is obedient to Iran. “Frankly, [el ataque] “It emboldens Iran and terrorist groups like Hezbollah because they believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will continue to put more pressure on Israel than they do on Iran and its terrorists, who are harassing Israel with the stated goal of destroying it,” Cotton said. Speaking to CNN, the senator also blamed Harris for “many of the worst decisions of the Biden administration,” 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.
But some Republicans are warning that personal attacks on Harris could backfire (the campaign has, in fact, urged moderation of misogynistic and racist remarks). New Hampshire Gov. 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 Sen. J.D. Vance, should stop the personal attacks because they won’t get people to vote for them, lamenting that the Republican leader has missed an opportunity to do so in recent campaign rallies.
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