Washington, January 23: In the United States, Kamala Harris, the first Indian-origin Senator, has raised a whopping more than 1 million US Dollar funds within 24 hours after announcing her Presidential bid for 2020.
38,000 donors gave 1.5 million dollars to Ms Harris for her campaign. She also raised more than 110,000 dollars from merchandise.
On Monday, 54-year old Harris officially launched her campaign to take on President Donald Trump on Monday, saying she was honoured to announce her bid on a day when Americans celebrated Martin Luther King Jr who sought inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi.
Harris, who announced her candidacy on Monday, crossed the $1 million threshold before 7:30 p.m. and raised $1.5 million from 38,000 donors, her aides said. As a point of comparison, Sanders’ early 2015 cash haul came from about 35,000 donors who gave an average of $43.50, his campaign said at the time.
Harris’ campaign in the first 12 hours made $110,000 in revenue from its online merchandise store that sells t-shirts, hats and tote bags — breaking the single-day, single-candidate record for sales by the vendor, Bumperactive. The company worked for the likes of Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Gillum in the 2018 midterms, according to published reports.
For Harris, the first numbers are a demonstration of early strength and serve as a way to measure initial excitement for her. They’ve also tried to cultivate organic appeals to supporters, including using behind-the-scenes announcement photographs shot by Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, which accompanied an email he co-authored to her list.
Harris grew the campaign’s email list by 20 percent on Monday. Her video announcement teasing a Sunday rally in Oakland was viewed 6 million times and her Instagram account gained more than 100,000 new followers, the campaign said. The campaign also said it ran 25,000 Facebook ad variations.