Kamala Harris is the early favorite of entertainment industry donors shopping for the strongest Democrat to challenge President Trump in 2020.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California drew some of the most powerful players in Hollywood to her recent reception at the Pacific Palisades home of filmmaker J. Abrams of the “Star Wars” franchise.
Television producer Shonda Rhimes, actress Elizabeth Banks and music giant Quincy Jones were among the guests enjoying hors d’oeuvres and drinks under a full moon.
Harris, who lives in Los Angeles, has emerged as the entertainment industry’s early favorite in the swelling field of Democrats running for president, according to some of the party’s top Hollywood fundraisers.
“I think she’s really trying to corral this community as her donor base,” said Hannah Linkenhoker, the senior political strategist at ICM Partners and co-founder of the L. A. Women’s Collective donor group. “To some extent, that’s working. She’s definitely had the most events, and the most high-profile.”
More than a dozen of the senator’s White House rivals have traveled to Los Angeles in recent months in a scramble for entertainment industry money, a pillar of Democratic fundraising.
Guarded from public view, their gatherings with high-dollar donors in Beverly Hills, Brentwood and the Hollywood Hills can be crucial to keeping their campaigns alive for the early 2020 contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
Some of the candidates — Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, to name a few — have worked the circuit of L. A. donors for years in races for lower office.
None, however, can match the bonds that Harris forged with Hollywood political players as she ran twice for state attorney general and once for U. S. Senate. Over the last decade, she has collected more than $1.7 million from the entertainment industry, a Times analysis found.
Jane Fonda, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Halle Barre, Reese Witherspoon, Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Charlize Theron and a long roster of studio executives gave money to Harris in the years before she launched her campaign for president.
