US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Credit: Reuters Photo
It’s the $96 million question: Can Vice President Kamala Harris seamlessly inherit the huge sum of money that President Joe Biden amassed in his war chest for the Biden-Harris ticket?
The answer is likely to be legally straightforward but politically charged.
Within minutes of Biden’s dropout announcement Sunday, Republicans appeared poised to challenge any change to the account. The Republican National Committee is leaving open the possibility of lawsuits related to the potential transfer and use of Biden campaign money, according to one official with knowledge of the matter, The New York Times reported Saturday.
But Dara Lindenbaum, a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, said that because Harris was on the Biden-Harris campaign committee’s registration statement, the money was hers.
“In my view, this is not an open question,” Lindenbaum, a Democratic appointee, said in an interview. The FEC, a six-member, bipartisan board, would most likely field any legal challenges to the campaign’s moves.
“It’s very clear,” Lindenbaum said, adding, for emphasis: “If Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee, she gets to use all the money in the account.”
Biden appeared to leave no doubt as to the legal ownership of that money. After he endorsed her, he followed that post with another on the social platform X, writing, “And if you’re with us, donate to her campaign here.”
He linked to the Biden-Harris campaign’s ActBlue site, where the donation page read: “Donate to Elect Kamala Harris.”
And Sunday afternoon, the “Biden for President” campaign committee officially filed paperwork with the FEC to rename itself “Harris for President.” The paperwork was submitted at 4:51 p.m., according to the commission.
Still, Sean Cooksey, who is currently serving as FEC chair, suggested potential uncertainty in a cryptic message on X earlier Sunday, posting a section of the federal election statute: “If the candidate is not a candidate in the general election, all contributions made for the general election shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated …, or reattributed …, as appropriate.”
(That section of the law is typically relevant if a candidate does not make it past the primary, in which case any individual contributions exceeding $3,300 must be refunded by the campaign.)
Cooksey, a Republican appointee, said in a brief interview that there were “open questions” about what would come next. “This is an unprecedented event, and it should be not surprising this is not an easy legal question to resolve,” he said.
If Harris is not the nominee, things would certainly grow more complicated. The Biden-Harris campaign committee could transfer any money remaining in the primary account to the Democratic National Committee or even to a super political action committee. But any funds in the campaign’s general election account might have to be refunded to donors. And a new nominee would have to start over with a fresh campaign account.