Oprah Winfrey has tried to tamp down the notion — which has gotten some traction on social media — that she was paid $1 million to endorse Kamala Harris.
The story gained gasoline after a Washington Instances story that cited marketing campaign finance information exhibiting that Oprah Winfrey’s manufacturing firm, Harpo Productions, was paid a complete of $1 million for occasion manufacturing.
There’s a motive that the cost was made: Marketing campaign finance legislation.
Federal Election Fee guidelines require campaigns to pay the honest market worth for the ancillary prices of holding occasions — every little thing from staging to the band to foods and drinks.
Federal legislation prohibits firms from giving on to a candidate’s marketing campaign, so it will be as much as the marketing campaign to reimburse these prices. A performer may choose up the tab herself, however in accordance with the FEC, “when an individual or entity pays for companies on the committee’s behalf, the cost is an in-kind contribution.” The worth counts towards federal contribution limits “as a present of cash does.” The restrict for a person contribution was $3,300 to the candidate, and $926,300 to a joint victory fund that raised for the marketing campaign, the Democratic Nationwide Committee and state events.
Because the marketing campaign and a few of its spending has drawn scrutiny following Harris’ defeat, officers are pushing again on the concept that it paid for superstar help.
Adrienne Elrod, who served as senior adviser and senior spokesperson for the Harris marketing campaign, informed Deadline, “We don’t pay. Now we have by no means paid any artist and performer. Now we have by no means paid a payment to that individual.”
What the marketing campaign is required to do is pay “for any ancillary prices for that efficiency.” That might embrace every little thing from journey to paying band members to a backline producer.
“There are legal guidelines that need to be adopted that we now have adopted religiously on this marketing campaign,” she mentioned.
In a TMZ video, Winfrey herself denied that she was paid, and she or he adopted up with a response to a remark in The Shade Room, during which she additionally defended the sum paid for the manufacturing.
“Often I’m reluctant to answer rumors generally, however as of late I notice that if you happen to don’t cease a lie, it will get greater. I used to be not paid a dime,” Winfrey wrote. “My time and vitality was my manner of supporting the marketing campaign. For the reside streaming occasion in September, my manufacturing firm Harpo was requested to herald set design, lights, cameras, crew, producers and each different merchandise mandatory (together with the benches and the chairs we sat on) to placed on a reside manufacturing. I didn’t take any private payment. Nonetheless, the individuals who labored on that manufacturing wanted to be paid. And had been. Finish of story.”
The reside streaming occasion was a city corridor, held in September, which had the texture of one in every of Winfrey’s daytime exhibits. The sit down with Harris was a marketing campaign occasion — promoted closely on social media — and it included an viewers of rank-and-file supporters and celebrities corresponding to Meryl Streep, Chris Rock and Jennifer Lopez.
It was additionally a method that the Harris marketing campaign deployed celebrities within the final three months. Bruce Springsteen, Eminem and Girl Gaga had been amongst those that all through the battleground states, one thing that has itself generated questions as to only how efficient they finally had been, given Harris’ loss, and whether or not they merely performed into Donald Trump‘s railing towards the so-called elite.
That mentioned, the criticisms have been raised earlier than after Democratic losses. Gaga, as an example, appeared with Hillary Clinton within the ultimate days of her marketing campaign. But she additionally appeared for Joe Biden at one his ultimate occasions in 2020, the 12 months he received. For his half, Trump additionally tapped celebrities, together with Lee Greenwood and Hulk Hogan, and his marketing campaign spent a number of the ultimate week coping with the fallout of a comic’s racist jokes at a Madison Sq. Backyard rally.
