WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris’ main allied group, Future Forward, raised more than $900 million to support her White House bid, a staggering sum that is far more than any outside political organization has ever brought in during an election cycle.
The group’s fundraising success during an unsuccessful election for Democrats has already made it a target for those in the party looking to assign blame. Future Forward sold some of the richest people in the world, including Bill Gates, on a failed path to victory. But Harris’ defeat was decisive enough in the seven battleground states that other Democrats have questioned whether different spending or other tactics would have in fact produced a different outcome.
Two leaders of Future Forward, which includes both a super political action committee and multiple nonprofit arms, told staff members on a private call a few days before Election Day that the group had taken in a combined $950 million during the 2024 cycle, according to a person with knowledge of the remarks. The details on Future Forward’s fundraising were laid out on the call by Chauncey McLean, the group’s president, and Katie Petrelius, its chief fundraiser.
Two other people briefed by Future Forward leaders in recent weeks also said they had been told that the group’s total fundraising topped $900 million. The three people insisted on anonymity to discuss the figures.
The full picture of Future Forward’s fundraising is only now coming into view. The group declined to comment.
From the beginning of the 2024 cycle through Oct. 15, the group’s super PAC arm had raised $394 million, according to federal filings. The additional amount it raised from that point through Election Day will emerge next month and is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, based on the group’s cash position and spending patterns.
The nonprofit arm of Future Forward, which is not required to disclose the names of its donors, will share fundraising figures in tax filings this month and next year. Billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Gates each donated about $50 million to the nonprofit group toward the end of the campaign, The New York Times previously reported. About 35% of the total amount raised by the super PAC originated from that nonprofit group, Future Forward USA Action.
Harris’ own campaign raised more than $1 billion itself during her 107-day sprint. The vast scale of liberal spending on the race, which well outstripped that of Donald Trump and his Republican allies, has led Democrats to question the true value of money in a presidential campaign.
After Harris became the party’s presidential nominee, the super PAC aired about $450 million worth of ads, with about half spent on digital ads, including more than $50 million spent on YouTube. The group made and tested 1,048 ads since Aug. 1, and conducted more than 7 million surveys of voters since then to test which ads would be the most effective to air.
Future Forward, which President Joe Biden’s campaign blessed early this year as its main allied organization before he dropped out and endorsed Harris, had an initial goal of raising about $700 million, a total it cleared in the final weeks.
Future Forward’s outsize role, insularity and penchant for secrecy made it controversial in Democratic circles well before Harris’ defeat — and certainly afterward.
The group’s influence meant that if Democrats had won, Future Forward would have most likely received a great deal of credit. Now, of course, the reverse is coming true.
Some Democratic fundraisers and advisers to major donors have argued that the party spent too much money on television and that its advertising strategy clearly did not succeed. Defenders of Future Forward argue that its expensive campaign effort evidently made a difference because although Trump did much better nationally than he did in 2020, he did only somewhat better than he did that year in the battleground states where Democrats spent big money.