Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, and Black Barbershops: How Kamala Harris Whittled Away Her Campaign War Chest in the Election's Final Days

When Beyoncé Knowles appeared at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris in Houston days before the election, the pop superstar declared she was there not as a politician or a celebrity. "I’m here as a mother," she said.

But the $165,000 that Knowles’s production company, Parkwood Production Media, received from the Harris campaign may have had something to do with it.

That payment is part of a massive spending spree that Team Harris made to pay celebrities, musicians, and other influencers in the homestretch of her ill-fated presidential run. The campaign paid $75,000 to Thrill Hill Productions, the production company of rocker Bruce Springsteen. Harris’s campaign also paid $20,000 to Sneaker Addict Touring, the company of rapper Fat Joe, and $211,000 to Ganesha Touring, the company of singer Ricky Martin. The campaign paid another $145,000 to W.L.L. & Associates, the manager of rapper 2 Chainz, and $178,000 to RMS Music Group, the company of norteño band Los Tigres del Norte.

Then there was a Team Kamala payment of $20,000 to Philly Cuts, a black-owned barbershop in Philadelphia, where Harris sat for a 10-minute roundtable discussion to promote her "opportunity agenda for black men."

The campaign disclosed the payments in its latest Federal Election Commission filing, which shows it raised $160 million in the final weeks of the campaign, spent $277 million, and ended up with just $1.8 million in the bank.

The disclosures come as Harris and her campaign consultants face withering scrutiny for whittling away $1.5 billion in just three months on the campaign trail. Future Forward PAC, the largest outside group supporting Harris, had a similar spending problem. It raised $532 million in the election cycle, spent $556 million, and ended with more than $47 million in unpaid bills, according to campaign finance analyst Rob Pyers.

Democrats have been especially critical of the Harris campaign’s exorbitant spending on ad production and celebrity-studded campaign stops. The campaign forked out more than $600 million to four Democratic consulting firms to run ads on behalf of Harris’s ill-fated campaign.

The Harris campaign paid entertainers and other influencers nearly $900,000 between Oct. 17 and Election Day, Nov. 5, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of the campaign’s disclosure.

The campaign paid $80,000 to Lovett Music, the company of R&B singer Victoria Monét, and $11,250 to Sunni Gyrl, the label of ‘90s-era rapper MC Lyte.

In some cases, the entertainers performed at Harris campaign events. Los Tigres del Norte, considered one of the most popular norteño bands in the country, performed at a campaign event in Arizona on Oct. 31. Springsteen gave a brief speech and played an even shorter acoustic set at a campaign stop for Harris in Philadelphia on Oct. 29. MC Lyte performed at a campaign event in Wisconsin.

The others merely gave stump speeches at Harris rallies. The Beyoncé event angered many fans, who expected the "Single Ladies" singer to perform at the rally. Instead, Beyoncé gave a four-minute introduction for Harris, whom she referred to as "the next president of the United States."

Fat Joe gave a stump speech in Allentown on Nov. 1 to urge Puerto Rican voters to turn out for Harris, though he gave no indication that his company was paid for the appearance.

"They said they needed a Puerto Rican in Allentown," said Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena. "And boy was I more than honored to come out and talk to my people."

Victoria Monét spoke at a get-out-the-vote event for Harris in Atlanta on Nov. 2, though she did not perform her Grammy-nominated song, "On My Mama."

Harris’s remittance to Philly Cuts Barbershop, which bills itself as a "premier black-owned barbershop," highlights another strategy she deployed in the final weeks of the campaign. Harris’s campaign donated more than $6 million to dozens of black and Latino advocacy organizations in order to drum up support from those constituencies. The campaign gave $2 million to the National Urban League and $500,000 to the National Action Network, the nonprofit of MSNBC host Al Sharpton. A media ethics group and black church organization have blasted MSNBC and Sharpton over the donation after Sharpton interviewed Harris on the network days after the donation.

Neither Harris nor her hosts gave an indication that she paid Philly Cuts for the event.

"Well, you survived the barbershop," said one Philly Cuts barber.

"Thank you for letting me come into the barbershop. I know what a sacred space this is," said Harris.

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