In the three months that she ran, Kamala took in and then spent over one billion dollars, outpacing by far any other political campaign in history. For perspective, that’s over $11 million per day. Now that the campaign is over, it’s time to look at that spending.
One amazing finding is that Oprah Winfrey was paid one million dollars from the Harris coffers. Her production company Harpo Productions received two payments of $500,000 each, which Oprah is using as cover to insist that she herself wasn’t paid.
For their part, the Harris campaign is contending that these payments were for “production costs,” but one must wonder what production work was done. Both the Harris campaign and Oprah have access to sets, stages & film staff. But even if it’s shown that these were legitimate payments, it’s still fair to ask whether a celebrity endorsement is credible when so much money is changing hands.
Considering the outsized influence of Winfrey, her endorsement likely swayed voters toward Kamala. The same could be said of Beyoncé, or Taylor Swift. It could also be said of celebrities like Elon Musk. If the American people are going to decide their vote with help from celebrity endorsements, it should be incumbent on those celebrities to disclose any payments to themselves, family members, or businesses they or their families operate.
But wait, aren’t these disclosures already required? Yes, but by the campaign, and not necessarily in realtime. It’s one thing to discover who a campaign’s donors are a month later, but the impact of a celebrity endorsement is immediate, and delayed disclosure allows the celebrity and the campaign to pretend as though the recommendation from the candidate is because they’re on board with the campaign, rather than because they’re getting a fat paycheck behind the scenes.
It’s not a given that paying someone means that their endorsement is disingenuous, but the American people deserve the right to know when that happens, and to factor that consideration into their vote.
