(Bloomberg) -- Kamala Harris is taking a brief break from wooing swing-state voters to attend high-dollar fundraisers in California this weekend to pad her financial advantage over Republican rival Donald Trump.
“This is a margin-of-error race and we are the underdog. And I am running like the underdog,” Harris said Saturday to a home-state crowd at a top-dollar fundraiser in San Francisco. “This race is as close as it could possibly be,” she said, backed by polling figures this week that show she retains a razor-thin edge in swing states, with some essentially tied.
Harris sought to draw contrast with both the previous two election cycles as well as her opponent’s positions, saying that Trump is in many ways an “unserious man” while casting stances of the former president on health care and reproductive rights as “brutally serious.”
Pitched by the campaign as the last chance for Golden State donors to meet with Harris before Election Day, tickets for Saturday’s event at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles fundraiser on Sunday top out at $926,600. Those who donate at least $100,000 can get a photo taken with the vice president, while those at the $250,000 level and above can attend a luncheon.
Harris, a former California senator, previously raised $12 million at a high-end fundraiser in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel in August. The turnout included tech industry leaders such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom. This is the first fundraiser Harris is attending in her adopted hometown since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July.
“Hollywood and Silicon Valley are both big sources of interested political money, and those industries are not exclusively Democratic,” said Jim Newton, a lecturer in the public policy department of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Both Harris and Trump are looking to tap California’s prodigious donor base with the election less than six weeks away. The former president attended a Silicon Valley fundraiser earlier in September.
Harris so far is outraising and outspending Trump’s campaign by $5 million a day. Still, polls show a tight race, particularly in the battleground states. Across the seven swing states, Harris is ahead by 3 percentage points among likely voters, the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll shows.
The two are also vying for the business world. A UBS wealth survey released Thursday showed that while Harris had an edge over Trump among wealthy investors, business owners were more likely to vote Trump.
In a New York City fundraiser on Sept. 22, Harris vowed to help grow investment in artificial intelligence and crypto if elected. Trump last week paid for burgers with Bitcoin at a crypto-themed bar in New York.
Shannon Nash, the co-founder of the Tech4Kamala group and who is attending Saturday’s fundraiser, said the vice president has been receptive to the tech community’s policy concerns.
“She really is listening to tech. She is looking at things like responsible AI,” Nash said. “We need a president who is going to be collaborative in coming up with rule-making, not one who is going to be a dictator in coming up with rule-making.”
Ticket Sales
Both California events are “close to sold out,” said California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, who’s attending. Saturday’s fundraiser in San Francisco sold out its lowest tier of $500 tickets before the campaign opened up more seats to the event, which in turn sold out.
When second gentleman Doug Emhoff headlined a San Francisco fundraiser on Aug. 30 for his wife, tickets started at $25,000. The lower minimum price for Harris’ event enabled supporters like State Controller Malia Cohen to sell more tickets, including from people who knew Harris from her tenure as the city’s district attorney, Cohen said.
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm and some pent-up money waiting for Harris in Los Angeles,” said Phil Recht, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown LLP who plans to attend the Los Angeles event.
Harris’ campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about the fundraisers.
At Trump’s September fundraiser at the Woodside home of C3.ai Inc. CEO Tom Siebel, tickets cost as much as $500,000 per couple.
“President Trump is a fundraising juggernaut and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from donors, both big and small, in all fifty states,” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
When national politicians need money, they come to California, said Newton.
“The candidates keep coming here, and neither of them is actively campaigning for votes in California since Harris will probably win it by 4 million votes,” Newton said.
--With assistance from Michelle Jamrisko.
(Updates with San Francisco fundraiser remarks in second and third paragraphs.)
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