Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

You're the f'ing moron. And you're too intellectually dishonest, or too stupid, to accept that the argument I made about a GOP scenario, with the same circumstances applying to an un-hanged Mike Pence, would play out as described.

Refute it or STFU.

https://hls.harvard.edu/today/can-kamala-harris-access-biden-campaign-funds/

HLT: So for the purposes of campaign donations, running mates who are on the same “ticket” running for president and vice president are a package deal? If somebody said they donated to President Biden three weeks ago, for example, were they donating to President Joe Biden or the Biden-Harris campaign?

Stephanopoulos: For the current 2024 presidential election, the Biden-Harris Campaign is technically where those donations have been going. That’s a fund that supports the campaign for president and the vice president. If the presidential nominee wasn’t someone already on the ticket, for example Gavin Newsom, it would be more cut-and-dry that Biden-Harris campaign funds could not go directly to him. With a non-Biden/non-Harris nominee, the money would have to stay independent from the new candidate and most likely end up with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or some other party committee. The entity receiving those funds could still use that money to support the new candidate, it just wouldn’t be able to transfer those funds to the new candidate directly.


Harvard Law Today: Given that Biden was chosen as the nominee by voters through the primaries, is the Democratic Party allowed to just change its nominee? If so, practically, how does that work?

Nicholas Stephanopoulos: So, it’s important to remember — Biden was not the actual, official nominee of the Democratic Party yet. He was just the presumptive nominee because he had accumulated enough pledged delegates to get a majority of the total number of delegates.

But the convention hadn’t happened. The delegates hadn’t voted. And, so, he hadn’t yet become the nominee. Once President Biden dropped out, the party was free to identify a different nominee. The ultimate bar for becoming the Democratic Party nominee is just having an outright majority of delegates voting for you at the convention in August. Now it appears that Kamala Harris is going to have an outright majority of delegates backing her.

If so, under the pre-existing standard Democratic Party rules, she’ll receive the official nomination. Things might have been a lot trickier if Biden had pulled out after becoming the official nominee. But because he pulled out before the convention, things are a lot simpler.

HLT: With the rules regarding campaign fundraising, is there a difference between funds that are raised by the official Biden-Harris campaign and those raised by supporting organizations?

Stephanopoulos: There is a difference in that all of the various Super PACs or party committees or other entities that are raising money can spend that money however they want to regardless of who the nominee is, so it makes no difference for any of these other groups, legally, whether the nominee is Biden or Harris.

For Harris, in particular, she has just inherited the money that the Biden-Harris ticket had previously raised and so, about a hundred million dollars just went under her direct control after Biden dropped out because she was already on the ticket.

Campaign finance lawyers have questioned whether that’s strictly kosher. It’s not going to make a difference practically because Harris has the keys to the account right now and any complaint about that is not going to be resolved by the FEC remotely in time for the election. So while there is a little cloud of doubt over whether it’s completely fine for Harris just to inherit all this money that was given to Biden-Harris, as a practical matter, she’s doing it, and any legal doubts will most likely remain open until after the election.