Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign donated $500,000 to Al Sharpton’s nonprofit organization just weeks before the anti-Semitic MSNBC host—who once said that "diamond merchant" Jews have the "blood of innocent babies" on their hands—conducted a friendly interview with Harris.
The campaign’s remittance to Sharpton’s National Action Network was part of a flurry of donations—$5.4 million in all—to black and Latino advocacy groups that seem aimed at winning Harris support from those constituencies. Harris’s campaign gave two payments of $250,000 to National Action Network on Sept. 5 and Oct. 1, according to campaign finance records.
On Oct. 3, Sharpton aired a video of Harris wishing him happy birthday on his MSNBC weekend show, PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton. "Happy birthday, Rev," Harris said, using Sharpton’s nickname. "You have been over all of your years such an extraordinary leader. You have been a voice of truth, a voice of conscience."
Sharpton, 70, conducted a glowing interview with Harris on Oct. 20 in which he touted her "extraordinary historic campaign" while referring to Trump as "hostile and erratic." His questions lined up closely with messages that Harris sought to highlight on the campaign trail. Sharpton addressed concerns among black voters—especially black men—about Harris’s record as a prosecutor in California, where she was given the nickname "Kamala the Cop." Sharpton brought up Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, and one of Harris’s personal heroes, to put Harris’s candidacy in historical perspective. Sharpton asked Harris whether men who opposed her were "misogynistic."
Sharpton did not disclose payments from the Harris campaign during either segment with the candidate. National Action Network did not respond to requests for comment. MSNBC also did not respond to comment requests.
Harris’s donations to National Action Network and similar groups were part of a $1 billion spending spree that has sparked heartache and soul-searching within the Democratic Party, which lost the popular vote to a Republican candidate for the first time since 2004. The campaign, which ended $20 million in debt, leaned heavily on celebrities, influencers, and other high-profile Harris backers to make her case to voters. Her campaign gave $1 million to the production company of Oprah Winfrey, and paid a six-figure sum to create a set for Harris’s interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the Washington Examiner reported.
Team Harris donated to the National Urban League ($2 million), the Black Economic Alliance ($150,000), and Black Church PAC ($150,000). The campaign gave donations to lesser-known groups like the Haitian Ladies Fund ($30,000) and International Free and Accepted Modern Masons ($150,000), a black freemasons organization, according to campaign finance disclosures. The Black Economic Alliance hosted a video call for 5,000 attendees days before the election to urge black men to vote for Harris. Vote to Live Action Fund, which received $275,000 from the Harris campaign, launched a $4 million initiative in October to pressure black men to vote. Harris spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an initiative to appeal to black church voters. Two of the organizations, Black Church PAC and the Institute of Church Administration and Management ($250,000), are linked to Frederick Haynes, an anti-Israel pastor who has worked with Harris for years on liberal causes.
The campaign gave to Casa in Action ($120,000), the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada ($105,000), and Somos Votantes ($120,000), to mobilize Latino voters in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and other swing states. The lavish giveaways seemingly failed given Harris’s historically poor performance with black and Latino voters.
Sharpton reportedly earns a seven-figure salary from MSNBC, and is paid handsomely by National Action Network, which he founded in 1991. The nonprofit paid Sharpton around $650,000 in 2021 out of $7 million in revenues, and spent another $940,000 that year for "transportation services" to the private jet firm Apollo Jets and the limousine company Carey International.
It’s not the first time Sharpton has faced conflict of interest concerns regarding donations to his group, which he launched in 1991. The tobacco company R.J. Reynolds has donated heavily to Sharpton’s network. Sharpton, for his part, has publicly opposed a ban on menthol cigarettes, raising concerns that the activist preacher is being paid off to promote a harmful product popular with black Americans.
Sharpton has become an influential figure in mainstream Democratic circles after rising to national prominence in the 1990s for his involvement in anti-Semitic causes. He once taunted Jews to "pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." In 1991, he provoked the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn, one of the worst anti-Semitic outbursts in American history. In 1995, Sharpton protested against the Jewish owner of Freddy’s Fashion Mart, whom he called a "white interloper." A gunman who had attended Sharpton’s protests later murdered seven people in the store.