Kamala Harris told Al Sharpton she is thinking about running for president again in 2028.
She thought she could count on her old allies having her back again.
What they just said on the record is the last thing she needed heading into another campaign.
Kamala Harris 2024 Donors Say They Will Not Fund Her 2028 Presidential Run
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings wrote Kamala Harris a $1 million check for her 2024 super PAC and called it an investment in stopping Donald Trump.
Trump won anyway.
Now Hastings is being asked about 2028, and he did not hesitate.
"Gavin is the candidate who can motivate both the left and the center," the Netflix co-founder told the Los Angeles Times, making clear Newsom is where his attention has moved.
He isn’t alone.
The Los Angeles Times reached out to former fundraisers and donors who gave more than $1 million to Harris's 2024 campaign and found the same answer at every turn.
"I think it is too early to pick a favorite in the 2028 race, but Kamala Harris will not be my candidate," one seven-figure donor said.
"I don't think she would appeal to a swing voter, and we need swing voters to win."
One former fundraiser put it plainly: "There is an enormous appetite for new blood – something fresh, something that really represents the future, not the past."
Then came the gut punch.
Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina – the Democrat kingmaker who rescued Joe Biden's dead 2020 campaign with a single endorsement – was asked directly about Harris's 2028 prospects.
"I'm not thinking about 2028, and if she were to call me I wouldn't talk to her about it," Clyburn said.
That is not a polite deflection.
That is a door slamming in her face.
What Kamala Harris Donors Said After She Spent a Billion Dollars and Lost Every Swing State
The frustration inside the donor class has been building since Election Night 2024.
Harris lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina.
She underperformed Biden – the man Democrats pushed out of the race because voters thought he was too old – among women, working-class voters, Black men, and Latino men.
And she burned through $1 billion in 107 days and Trump swept every battleground state.
When asked why, Harris went on The View and blamed the calendar.
"One of the biggest" reasons she lost, she told the hosts, was that "we just didn't have enough time."
Her former fundraisers are not buying it.
"I don't think it's a helpful narrative to start with the 2024 hangover," one told the Los Angeles Times.
The donor class watched her refuse to separate herself from an unpopular Biden, skip economic messaging while voters screamed about grocery prices, and lose every state that mattered.
Gavin Newsom has since banked nearly $4 million in his leadership PAC, Hollywood money is moving his direction, and he has made clear he will not stand aside for Harris the way he did in 2024.
Kamala Harris Is Still the 2028 Frontrunner and Her Donors Know What That Means
Harris is still winning the polls – and that is what should terrify every Democrat donor who wants to beat the Republican nominee in 2028.
A Harvard/Harris poll released last month put her at 50 percent support among Democrat primary voters, up from 39 percent in January.
Cornell Belcher, who ran polling for both Barack Obama campaigns, explained why no rival can touch her: "When black voters broke for Barack Obama starting in South Carolina, he couldn't be beat because so much of the primary goes through the Black Belt and those southern states. If you can't compete with Harris with black voters, you can't win the South."
Harris captured 54 percent of black voter support in a Center Square national poll – nearly three times Newsom's share.
Biden proved the model in 2020. He was dead after Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina's Black voters resurrected him and he never looked back. Harris owns that same firewall, and no one in the current field has figured out how to break it.
Every party leader sees it. Every potential rival sees it. And yet Harris leads the polls, commands the coalition that controls the primary calendar, and just told Al Sharpton she might run again while a crowd chanted "run again" behind her.
Winning Democrat primaries in Louisiana and Mississippi does not win Michigan in November – and the people who wrote the last billion-dollar check already know how that movie ends.
Harris has the voters. What she does not have is the money. Without the big donors who just walked away, Democrats could be watching a second failure to launch play out in slow motion – with a frontrunner nobody in power actually wants.
Sources:
- Zain Khan, "Kamala's cash crisis: Big donors turn their backs on Harris as 2028 bid already hangs by a thread," New York Post, May 10, 2026.
- Staff, "Dems' divide over Harris surfaces as she looks like a 2028 contender," Axios, January 19, 2026.
- Staff, "Harris fuels 2028 presidential run speculation with South Carolina visit," Fox News, April 17, 2026.
- Staff, "Kamala Harris surges in new 2028 poll," Newsweek, May 5, 2026.
- Staff, "Poll: Kamala Harris still Democratic favorite for 2028," The Center Square, October 2025.