Kamala Harris: Zoom fundraisers raise millions

Online events hosted on Zoom have become an integral part of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Increased protections against trolls and larger meeting capabilities since the last election has allowed for gatherings such as “White Dudes for Harris”, “Win with Black Women”, and “White Women: Answer the Call”. Those three fundraisers have raised more than $16 million. When too many people attempted to log in and crashed a fundraiser, Zoom increased its cap beyond 100,000 attendees for the first time, telling the committee: “You broke Zoom”. Organising online is much easier for Harris’s truncated campaign, and there is enough distance from covid lockdowns that the idea of a Zoom meeting doesn’t cause the same dread that it might have done in 2020. Team Trump does not have the same gameplan: Eric Wilson, a Republican campaign technologist, told the NYT: “Everyone on our side wanted to be in person.”