by WorldTribune Staff, July 19, 2017
The competition for the Democratic Party presidential nomination for 2020 is already buzzing.
Sen. Kamala Harris, seen as a fresh face in a field that includes several septuagenarians, is playing both camps from the 2016 Democratic Party contest – having made the rounds with wealthy Hillary Clinton donors while also paying the same progressive media firm that fueled Bernie Sanders’ underdog run to raise her profile.
The 52-year-old California senator is “absolutely” running for president, according to one fundraiser, after Harris trolled for cash from former Clinton supporters at a fundraiser in the posh Hamptons in New York last weekend.
Harris is “thinking much bigger” than the Senate, one top bundler said.
“She’s running for president. Take it to the bank,” another fundraiser said. “She’s absolutely going to run.”
Harris is likely to be in a crowded field for the 2020 nod, with other popular party choices including Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warner, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and longtime Clinton pal and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
“All bets are off when it comes to the composition of the 2020 Democratic primary,” said Morning Consult Co-founder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. “Early polling indicates that many of the names being floated in Washington still have a lot of work to do in terms of building national profiles.”
Filings show that Harris, meanwhile, has paid $407,530 this year to Revolution Messaging LLC, the firm that helped Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary.
The Washington, D.C.-based progressive online media firm founded by Scott Goodstein, an online director for Obama for America in 2008, created the digital and branding strategy the turned Sanders from also-ran to contender.
“In the spring of 2015, before the campaign launched, we knew Bernie Sanders was a leader who stood on the right side of history,” the group wrote in their case study. “But Bernie was polling around 3 percent, had no establishment support, little name recognition and was running against a popular and ‘inevitable’ Democratic primary opponent. We had our work cut out for us. With no offline fundraising team, no Super PAC, and no Wall Street money, we would have to raise almost all of the campaign’s money from small-dollar donations.”
Revolution, which helped Sanders raise $218 million online, also worked on Harris’s successful 2016 Senate campaign.
Subscribe to Geostrategy-Direct __ Support Free Press Foundation__Drop Us A Line