In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has spent over $15 million towards paying off former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign expenses, according to a recent report.
Axios reported that in the “first six months of 2025,” the DNC has spent over $15 million, which has gone toward paying off Harris’s presidential campaign expenses.
This comes after the Republican National Committee (RNC) was reported to have had $80 million “on hand” as of the end of June, while the DNC had $15 million, according to Politico.
As a result of the DNC continuing to pay off Harris’s presidential campaign expenses, Democrats have reportedly started to “point fingers at each other.” Democrats have also reportedly “asked Harris and her team to hold more fundraisers and call more donors” in an effort to raise more money, per Axios:
• Some donors and senior Democrats are angry that Harris’ campaign spent an unprecedented $1.5 billion during her 15-week run and still lost all seven swing states.
• Some donors have grown reluctant to give the DNC more money as the party is trying to pivot to the 2026 midterms.
Four people “with knowledge” of an alleged agreement between the Harris campaign and the DNC, told the New York Times (NYT) that under a “private agreement,” the DNC would “pick up the tab for any outstanding 2024 bills, allowing Ms. Harris to claim she did not end the race in debt.”
In return, Harris “would raise the money to cover all of those leftover costs.” This agreement was also “corroborated through Federal Election Commission disclosures,” according to the outlet:
The private agreement was this: The party would pick up the tab for any outstanding 2024 bills, allowing Ms. Harris to claim she did not end the race in debt. In turn, Ms. Harris would raise the money to cover all of those leftover costs, leaving the party whole financially as it sought to navigate the second Trump era.
Left in the dark were the small donors who received nearly 100 email solicitations sent from the Harris operation this year alone on behalf of the D.N.C. The emails did not disclose that funds raised from those emails were essentially earmarked for leftover bills. Convincing donors, both big and small, to pay for debts is typically a tough sell.
The NYT added that “federal records show” that the DNC “has covered” roughly $20.5 million in “post-election bills” for Harris’s campaign.
Breitbart News reported that while Harris’s presidential campaign raised over $1 billion, in the final week of her campaign, her campaign fell $20 million in debt.
