Kamala Harris Surrogate Turns Against the Campaign: 'A Lot of Us Were Misled'
A Democratic National Committee member expressed frustration over the disappointing conclusion of the billion-dollar campaign led by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Lindy Li, a DNC National Finance Committee member and prominent fundraiser for Harris, pointed to shared responsibility, mentioning President Joe Biden as well as members of the Harris campaign.
Reflecting on Biden’s endorsement of Harris shortly after he exited the race, Li remarked, “I actually think President Biden, the whole endorsing her 30 minutes after he dropped out, I think that was a big, ‘F you’ to the party. ‘If you don’t want me, here’s somebody you may not like, deal with it,’ you know?” In a Saturday interview, she added, “Kind of like sticking it to the man.”
Li suggested that the Biden and Harris factions had issues well before Biden’s withdrawal from the race. “The relationship was terrible even before the campaign,” she noted, describing a dynamic of “backstabbing” and assigning Harris “the least favorable agenda,” including responsibilities on “immigration, civil rights.”
As a donor, Li clarified her impartiality, saying, “I’m not beholden to anyone; that’s why I’m here telling the truth.” She emphasized, “I’m not here to gaslight anybody; this is just the truth.”
Li voiced disappointment over the campaign’s financial losses. “They’re $20 million or $18 million in debt. It’s incredible, and I raised millions of that. I have friends I have to be accountable to and to explain what happened because I told them it was a margin-of-error race,” she explained.
Recalling promises made by campaign officials, she said, “I was promised… Jen O’Malley Dillon promised all of us that Harris would win,” adding that Dillon even released videos affirming Harris’s victory. “I believed her, my donors believed her, and so they wrote massive checks. I feel like a lot of us were misled.”
Even on election night, Harris’s team projected optimism, talking about victories in deeply conservative Iowa. However, Li admitted, “I wasn’t seeing any basis for that level of confidence.”
Li also noted a perceived hesitancy from former President Barack Obama, stating, “I want to point out they waited three days – Michelle and Barack Obama waited three days to endorse Kamala Harris. It was the silence heard round the world.”
Summing up her thoughts, she called the campaign “an epic disaster” and a “$1 billion disaster.”
On election night, Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich highlighted Li’s view that choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Harris’s running mate was a mistake. “People are wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket. And not only in terms of Pennsylvania. He’s famously a moderate, so that would have signaled to the American people that she is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was, but she went with someone actually to her left, Minnesota….In the eyes of the American people, Walz was the governor who oversaw the protests,” Li said, referring to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who Harris did not select.
In a post on X, Li remarked that Democrats need “serious introspection if we ever want to win again,” acknowledging that “Trump has solidified a generational realignment of the electorate, winning over the working class and minorities.”