Kamala Harris takes checks from Blackstone executives
Vice President Kamala Harris is positioning herself as a champion against “corporate landlords” amid her campaign for the presidency, particularly in light of rising rent prices. However, her campaign is receiving substantial financial backing from executives of Blackstone, the largest corporate landlord globally, with almost $800,000 raised from its top employees. This apparent contradiction has drawn criticism, particularly given that Blackstone faces scrutiny from Senate Democrats over practices like extreme rent hikes and illegal evictions.
Despite her vocal opposition to exploitative practices by large landlords, Harris has attracted significant support from Wall Street financiers, including a $413,000 contribution from Blackstone’s president in July. Critics label her accepting such donations as “rank hypocrisy,” underscoring the tension between her policy positions and her campaign financing. Harris’s economic plan includes a proposal to stop Wall Street from bulk-buying homes and enact stricter regulations on corporate real estate investors, demonstrating her attempt to align her campaign messaging with concerns over housing affordability. As she prepares for a potential matchup against Donald Trump in 2024, her relationship with major financial donors has become a focal point in the discussion of her campaign’s integrity and priorities.
Harris, vowing to fight ‘corporate landlords,’ takes checks from Blackstone executives
Vice President Kamala Harris is vowing to take on “corporate landlords” for jacking up rent prices should she win in November. At the same time, executives from the “biggest corporate landlord” in the world are boosting her presidential bid with large donations.
Harris’s joint fundraising committee boasts a war chest with almost $800,000 from top employees at Blackstone, the massive private equity firm facing scrutiny from Senate Democrats for “extreme rent hikes, illegal eviction, and other predatory practices,” Federal Election Commission filings show. Jonathan Gray, the president of Blackstone, also donated $413,000 to the Harris Action Fund in late July, according to multiple reports.
The large giving is a window into how Wall Street is lining up behind Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election despite Harris long aiming to position herself as a politician who holds big business accountable. In July, at a campaign rally in Atlanta, the Democratic presidential nominee insisted she “will take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases.”
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The Harris campaign’s economic plan, released in August, calls for stopping “Wall Street investors from buying up and marking up homes in bulk.”
“Community after community feels taken advantage of by Wall Street investors and distant landlords,” the Harris economic plan says. “Vice President Harris is calling on Congress to pass the Stop Predatory Investing Act to curtail these practices by removing key tax benefits for major investors who acquire large numbers of single-family rental homes.”
Harris’s willingness to accept the Blackstone-linked donations is “rank hypocrisy,” according to Adam Gibbs, the spokesman for the right-leaning Opportunity Solutions Project advocacy group.
“Kamala Harris loves the free market when it comes to receiving campaign cash, but she hates it when it comes to setting sound policy for a nation in the midst of an affordability crisis,” Gibbs said. “And she thinks the American people are too gullible to notice.”
As she prepares to face off against Trump, Harris has a cadre of billionaire megadonors in the world of philanthropy, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street fueling her campaign, the Washington Examiner reported. Harris has notably received over $1 million from attorneys at the law firm Paul Weiss, which is favored by Wall Street and Big Tech, federal records show.
The Harris campaign also chose the law firm Covington & Burling to help set up its transition team, CNN reported. That firm lobbies for many corporations, including semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm, according to a report by Donald Shaw in Sludge.
To Craig Holman, a lobbyist focused on campaign finance reform, “special interests” such as Blackstone are trying to protect themselves from government-led scrutiny in a Harris-Walz administration by giving money to both sides. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman is a Trump supporter and donates to Republicans.
“It’s the nature of our privately financed campaign finance system, special interests trying to curry favor,” said Holman, who lobbies on ethics issues at the progressive Public Citizen think tank. “They give her a lot of money, and maybe it will moderate her if she gets elected.”
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
“Her hypocrisy on this issue shows she is more concerned with solving her political problems than solving the problems facing middle-class families,” Gibbs said.
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