Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, was frustrated after a call with Kamala Harris’ campaign early last month. He and others on the call felt they hadn’t gotten a clear answer to something that has mystified leaders in Congress, co-chairs of the campaign and donors: Why did it seem like minority-owned political firms that typically work with Democratic campaigns aren’t getting as much of the record-breaking Harris campaign money as white-owned firms?
“If Black voters are the base, it should be Black vendors telling the story,” said one person familiar with the conversation with the nonpartisan group’s leader. And by the time the call finished, “We still didn’t really have any clear answers on anything.”
The conversation with Quentin Fulks, Harris’ principal deputy campaign manager, though cordial, was so far from any resolution that Johnson vowed to take the issue higher, three people told NOTUS — to someone who could answer how money is being spent and whether it’s being spent equitably.
Democrats are worried about the backslide they appear to be having with some Black voters, and Black vendors and their allies see an obvious solution: spend more money with the political class who actually know the most about that constituency and can adeptly tell Harris’ story. But minority vendors and media companies believe the Harris campaign is taking operatives of color for granted, and failing to spread around the lucrative contracts white-owned firms are getting.
It’s an issue that Democratic campaigns have dealt with for decades, and those close to Harris say she inherited the current problems from Joe Biden. And allies say Harris has repeatedly told aides that she wanted to spend more money on minority vendors and get out the vote operations.
“The vision of the vice president is to make sure that with all the money that’s being raised, that she can reach voters,” said Minyon Moore, a close adviser to Harris and the 2024 Democratic Convention chair. “And certainly it is important to her that she reaches voters through the lens of people that can communicate with them. That’s why we go to trusted voices. That is her value system. That is who she has been, and I’m sure that is the directive that the campaign is getting.”
NOTUS spoke with more than a dozen vendors, outside advisers and campaign staffers of all races for this story. And most say any directive hasn’t been actualized. The result doesn’t just imperil the bottom lines for minority-owned consulting companies, which typically rely on presidential campaigns to stay afloat in the off years. It’s also impacting the campaign’s outreach to the communities that the firms reflect, they say.
“Last time there was a better perspective,” said one Democratic operative close to the campaign, when asked about how the campaign used money to court Black voters. “It’s not just the media, it’s get-out-the-vote operations and grassroot operations. It’s 20 questions now when it comes to anything for Black spending. And what we’re talking about are a small fraction of what’s being spent for the general market. It’s getting pretty insulting.”
Some feel that there’s too few people inside the campaign advocating for Black spending — that the only major pressure is coming from the outside. And the most damning charge is that a campaign led by the first Black and Southeast Asian woman to win the party’s nomination is marching into the final 40 days of the election with less money invested in Black outreach and Black firms than Biden had in 2020.
But the Harris campaign is running a different race than Biden did last cycle. The pandemic forced campaigns to rely more on paid media because of the inability to have a semblance of the traditional ground game that exists now. This year’s budget is allocated to include all expenditures: paid media, GOTV and field operations.
Cedric Richmond, co-chair of both the now-defunct Biden campaign and current Harris campaign, said this criticism should be spread out all across the Democratic Party, and not laid solely at the vice president’s feet. In an interview set up by the campaign, he pushed back against any notion that aides are taking Black operatives for granted and brushed off concerns.
“Everybody who said it’s not about money, that’s a lie. It’s all about money,” he told NOTUS. “They’re making noise because they want money and they want a contract, and that’s fair. It’s fine, and they should just say that.”
But one senior Democrat close to the campaign rejected that comment. “Black people and Black donors, they’ve been raising millions of dollars. This is not a handout for anything. This is about acknowledging the role of the Black vote in a race that is essentially tied.”
And the spending — or lack there of — fits into a pattern of Democrats taking the constituencies necessary to win for granted, they say.
“It’s a little concerning to see that the spending is so [much] less, so far lower. I think it’s approximately one-fourth less than what it was at this point four years ago,” one Democratic consultant close to the Harris-Walz campaign said about Black paid media. “We skated by in 2020. And we’re not spending at the levels we were spending at then.”
After spending over $70 million on paid media for Black audiences in 2020, the campaign is on track to spend considerably less this time around, two consultants said.
Polls show Democrats have lost significant ground with Black voters this cycle, particularly when Biden was atop the ticket. Harris’ candidacy and momentum appear to have helped to regain some support. An August poll from the Associated Press found that nearly half of the Black respondents said they were either extremely or very “excited” about Harris, a jump from March when only 30% said the same for Biden.
But operatives across the Democratic diaspora fear the campaign isn’t spending enough to turn that uptick in enthusiasm into actual votes as one in four Black men under 50 supports Trump for president, per a NAACP poll this month. And in battleground states, overall Black voters are going 82% for Harris from a Howard University poll earlier this month. In 2020, Black voters supported Biden by 92%, per the Pew Research Center.
“[Harris] has a compelling story to tell,” said Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, which targets Black voters. Her group was named one of 13 independent groups critical to Harris’ success in November, a nod from the campaign to donors to fund the outside groups as a part of their strategy to reach Black voters, a campaign official said.
“And the question that remains is: Can they reach enough voters, particularly those voters who remain not just skeptical but continue to question whether or not their participation in our elections matter, right?”
Citing recent ads on Black radio, other investments and Harris’ sit-down with the National Association of Black Journalists, Shropshire added of the campaign, “They very clearly understand, I think, the need to increase the communications they’re having with Black voters.”
Many across the party who NOTUS spoke with blamed the situation on Fulks, who some described as unresponsive to internal and external requests. He’s territorial with how paid media is conducted and how decisions are made, others have said. And ultimately, he is inexperienced in paid media.
Fulks has been asked repeatedly by high-ranking officials on the campaign to release more money from the budget to go to Black firms who handle Black outreach, most say often to no avail.
“The first, second and third response from him is ‘no’ on everything. Whatever you put forward, it’s ‘no.’ It’s not even necessarily considered, just reflexively, it’s ‘no,’” said one vendor.
Others also chide campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon — who they say ultimately has final say over the budget and bears the most responsibility for who is or is not getting paid.
Many also fault digital media head Rob Flaherty, who operatives say is allowing white-owned firms to place digital ads for the Black community, once a taboo for Democratic campaigns.
Leading Democrats like campaign co-chair Marcia Fudge and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford have also privately expressed their concern about who is getting campaign money and which businesses are being empowered. So has Richmond, two sources familiar with the conversations told NOTUS.
Asked if he had privately expressed his concerns to the campaign, Richmond did not say no.
“I’ll answer it this way: I am trying to win a race, and I believe we have to touch voters. We have to touch Black voters and brown voters. We have to touch them with the people with the expertise to connect with them,” he said. “So I have been very dogged on making sure that that’s what we are trying to do.”
Just last week in a meeting with Fulks, senior members of the CBC asked for a sizable investment from the campaign to cover incumbent candidate protection and get-out-the-vote efforts, similar to the $25 million that the campaign transferred to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
People familiar with a later meeting say Fulks told a group that the requests were egregious, the operative told NOTUS.
It’s unclear how much Harris is aware of the frustration. Two people close to Harris told NOTUS that she told advisers last month that she wanted to spend more money with Black vendors and organizations on the ground who are doing outreach and get-out-the-vote operations. A third person told NOTUS that Harris raised the issue of paying Black vendors and GOTV operations early on in the campaign, when Biden was still on the ticket. But, according to people with knowledge, that still hasn’t really been prioritized.
“She is clearly committed to investing in small businesses, but who is responsible for not operationalizing this in her campaign?” said a second vendor.
The issue of Black vendors not getting equitable pay is not new. In fact, stories pop up every cycle of the neglected firms. Those who spoke to NOTUS cited President Barack Obama’s campaign as an early offender.
“They didn’t build a deep-enough bench,” said one person who has worked on campaigns for 30-plus years. Hillary Clinton’s campaign didn’t do much better, though they tried to put more emphasis on making sure some companies were Black-owned. The pattern changed substantially in 2020 when the pandemic caused campaigns to rely more on advertising, particularly in Black markets.
But in 2023, that regressed. Even in June of this year, vendors went public with their grievances with the Biden campaign, telling Politico, “The campaign is missing an opportunity to elevate and invest in a part of the political class that is more reflective of the party’s base.” It led many who NOTUS spoke with to label this as a Biden campaign hangover, continued by the holdover aides who Harris kept after the transition.
Before the switch, the then-Biden campaign only retained one Black-owned vendor to create and place their media for TV and radio for Black audiences: Truxton Creative. While white-owned shops like Bully Pulpit Interactive and Gambit Strategies received full contacts this year, Truxton — founded by Terrance Green — hasn’t. The Harris campaign has since added on additional Black firms like HIT Strategies, a polling firm, as well as Walton Isaacson, a firm associated with American businessman Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Rise Up Media and Marketing Solutions, a media buyer, and All In the Field, a canvassing operation for Georgia and North Carolina. But unlike in 2020, the campaign doesn’t have a Black-owned direct mail firm on its payroll. The company they are using, Deliver Strategies, also works on behalf of entities like the NAACP and other Black-led organizations and Black Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Raphael Warnock. Still, it’s about the same number of Black vendors the campaign retained in 2020, a campaign official noted.
While operatives applaud more inclusion, at the heart of the issue is the volume of spending with Black-owned firms compared to white-owned ones — something they say isn’t even close.
“This will have lasting impacts on Black media firms during a cycle where we have raised the most money in the history of a campaign,” said the second Democratic vendor.
Truxton Creative received just over $3 million from the Biden campaign in 2020, the only spending with them that cycle per disbursement reports from the Federal Election Commission. Another $45.2 million was spent with Converging Media, a Black-owned company, for Black media buys during the same period.
This cycle, the Biden campaign started buying earlier and spending more: Truxton had taken in just under $13.9 million from mid-2023 to mid-July of this year. After Harris took over in late July, the campaign spent an additional roughly $4.1 million with Truxton, for a total of about $18 million this cycle. Because it’s a commission-based business, companies like Truxton would only net a small portion of that spending — the majority would go to media companies where the ads are being placed and some to production.
Those figures pale in comparison to the volume of what the campaign is spending with some white-owned firms. Blue Sky Agency, one of those firms, doesn’t show up in FEC filings. But an industry source told NOTUS that they were paid through an intermediary, Media Buying & Analytics LLC. From mid-August 2019 to mid-July 2020, Media Buying took in about $36.5 million. From the same timespan this cycle, Media Buying got about $76.4 million from the campaign. Since Harris took over, the campaign has spent an additional around $62 million with Media Buying.
The Biden campaign also spent almost $41.4 million with Bully Pulpit between late August and late December 2020. This year, the campaign started buying earlier — between late February and mid-July, they’d already spent over $21.3 million with Bully Pulpit. After Harris took over, the campaign spent another nearly $17.5 million with Bully Pulpit.
And other markets are receiving attention too. Latino-owned firm Conexion has netted about $21 million from the campaign since last August — more than what’s been spent with Truxton’s so far.
One change this election cycle, operatives say, is the campaign is asking minority businesses to pitch “constituency work,” which inherently limits their ability to make money in comparison to white-owned firms that pitch for the “general market” — a pseudonym for typically white audiences where voters of color could also be impacted. But some TV ads made by vendors of color do also run in the general market.
“There’s always going to be an oversized difference between two companies like that, which is unfortunate,” the consultant close to the campaign said.
And since Harris joined the ticket, the campaign has added white-owned firms like AL Media Strategy and Magnus Pearson Media.
NOTUS reached out to Conexion, AL Media, Gambit, Bully Pulpit, Walton Isaacson and Truxton Creative, who did not respond to requests for comment. NOTUS was not able to find contact information for Media Buying or Magnus Pearson Media.
Two people close to the campaign have said that Fulks has argued that a white-owned firm with a Black principal or associate assigned to the account should carry the same weight as a Black-owned firm.
The campaign has asked other Black-owned companies to build decks and pitch their constituency work and present it in meetings, only to be ghosted and eventually hear through the grapevine that it went to another nonminority firm. One vendor, who worked for the Biden campaign in 2020 and received nothing but good feedback, first engaged the campaign to talk about returning last fall. They weren’t told until late this summer that they wouldn’t be hired, derailing their ability to take on other clients because of the legal requirements of a presidential campaign.
Fulks — the architect of Warnock’s statewide campaigns — took over the full paid operation after the transition to Harris, a responsibility once under longtime Biden aide Mike Donilon. Fulks previously helped manage the campaign’s relationships with Black media.
He has told campaign officials to walk back money already promised to Black vendors, according to an email reviewed by NOTUS. And once Harris took control of the campaign, he declared that “our strategy has changed” and fewer resources could be spent in the Black community because the candidate herself is Black, according to two people familiar. Harris has repeatedly said that there shouldn’t be an “assumption” about her having Black support.
During the transition from Biden to Harris, the campaign was dark on Black voter radio and TV ads for four weeks, concerning people close to the campaign. General market ads went back up around a week after the transition.
One source told NOTUS that the campaign plans to place nearly all of its ad buys this month in the general market. Constituency markets — including Black, Latino and Asian — would account for just a small part of the ad buys: less than 20%.
But it’s not just Black operatives who see warning signs: It’s white and Latino aides as well. Recently, Latino staffers pushed back internally on the campaign after it was suggested that less money could be spent on outreach, according to a source familiar with their efforts. One person familiar with the conversation said O’Malley Dillon sided with the staffers. This back-and-forth preceded the announcement that the campaign aimed to boost Latino support with a $3 million radio ad buy.
Ultimately, for these operatives of all races who want Harris to be successful, the question comes down to this, said a third consultant.
“Who are you trusting to tell the story of the vice president?”
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Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS. Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.