Oprah Winfrey tried to quell the notion – which has gotten some attention on social media – that she was paid $1 million to endorse Kamala Harris.
The story gained momentum after the Washington Times published a story that cited campaign finance records that showed Oprah Winfrey’s production company, Harpo Productions, received a total of $1 million for producing the event.
There’s a reason behind the payment: Campaign finance law.
Federal Election Commission rules require campaigns to pay the fair market value of the additional costs of holding events – everything from party planning to a band to food and drink.
Federal law prohibits corporations from making donations directly to a candidate’s campaign, so the campaign would have to reimburse those costs. A performer can pick up the tab themselves, but according to the FEC, “when a person or entity pays for services on behalf of the committee, the payment is an in-kind contribution.” The value is counted against the federal contribution limits “as a financial gift would.” The individual contribution limit was $3,300 for the candidate, and $926,300 for the combined victory fund raised for the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties.
Because the campaign and some of its spending came under scrutiny after Harris’ defeat, officials are backing away from the idea that it paid for celebrity endorsements.
Adrienne Elrod, who served as a senior adviser and spokesperson for Harris’ campaign, told Deadline: “We don’t pay. “We have never paid for any artist or entertainer. We’ve never paid any fees to this person.”
What the campaign has to do is pay “any additional costs for this performance”. This can include everything from traveling to paying for band members and even a backline producer.
“There are rules to follow and we followed them religiously with this campaign,” she said.
In a video on TMZ, Winfrey herself denied being paid, and followed that up with a response to a comment on The Shade Room, in which she also defended the amount paid for the production.
“I’m usually reluctant to respond to rumors in general, but these days I realize that if you don’t stop the lie, it gets bigger. Winfrey wrote: “I didn’t charge a dime,” she wrote. “My time and energy was my way of supporting the campaign. For the livestream event in September, my production company Harpo was asked to bring the set design, lights, cameras, crew, producers, and every other item necessary (including the chairs and stools we sat in) to deliver the live production. I didn’t take any personal fees. However, the people who worked on this production had to be paid. And it was. End of story.”
The livestream event was a town hall, held in September, that resembled one of Winfrey’s daytime shows. Sitting down with Harris was a campaign event – heavily promoted on social media – and included an audience of supporters and celebrities such as Meryl Streep, Chris Rock and Jennifer Lopez.
This was also one of the ways the Harris campaign has used celebrity endorsements in the past three months. Bruce Springsteen, Eminem and Lady Gaga were among those across the battleground states, which in itself raised questions about how effective they were in the end, given Harris’ loss, and whether they only played into Donald Trump’s protest against the so-called elite.
However, they have been criticized before after Democratic losses. For example, Gaga appeared with Hillary Clinton in the final days of her campaign. However, she also appeared with Joe Biden at one of his last events in 2020, the year he won. For his part, Trump has also exploited celebrities, including Lee Greenwood and Hulk Hogan, and his campaign spent some of the last week dealing with the fallout from a comedian’s racist jokes at a Madison Square Garden rally.