The Harris campaign raised a whopping $200 million in its first week and signed up more than 170,000 volunteers, it announced Sunday, as the operation gets off to a quick start after President Biden ended his reelection bid.
The campaign announcement shows high enthusiasm for Harris as the likely Democratic nominee, with much of the party getting behind her candidacy.
Harris’s campaign said two-thirds of the donations came from first-time donors, with the vice president mobilizing supporters that President Biden had not reached.
“The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real — and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a memo reported by The Associated Press.
Election Day is just 100 days away, and both Harris and former President Trump are stepping up their campaign operations as the race enters the homestretch.
Polling is also close, with Harris neck and neck with Trump nationally but showing much better results than Biden in key swing states. The enthusiasm has also infected campaign surrogates, with Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) saying Saturday that he believes Harris will take Georgia.
“She’s rapidly united the Democratic Party behind her candidacy, sees the momentum in this head-to-head race against former President Trump, and she’s electrifying volunteers and grassroots Democrats across the country,” he told MSNBC. “She’s put Georgia in play.”
No other candidate has challenged Harris for the nomination, and her campaign has broken numerous fundraising records as it attempts to make up for a late start. Harris has already gathered enough committed delegates to effectively lock up the party’s nomination
Republicans have sharpened their attacks against the vice president in response, with many hitting Harris as too liberal and weak on immigration.
“Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, everything has gone to hell. And it will be much worse under Kamala Harris. Just look at her record,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Sunday on CNN. “Kamala Harris is a dangerous liberal. She makes Joe Biden look competent and moderate by contrast.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) warned that Harris at the top of the ticket energizes Democrats, urging Republicans on Sunday in an ABC interview to tone town personal attacks on the vice president to avoid alienating voters.
Sununu said the Trump campaign should stick to the issues and “stay away from the insults.”
He said Trump missed an opportunity to do that in recent campaign events, but “hopefully they can get back on track. I think he was on track for a couple months there. I think that the change in the campaign has kind of fired him up to go against her, personally.”
But Sununu also acknowledged that “nobody can get Donald Trump to do anything. But hopefully the numbers, the polls, will get Donald Trump to realize what was working and what didn’t.”