Celebrity-studded ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call raises $4m for vice-president

A Zoom call meant to rally "white dudes" in support of Kamala Harris's run for the White House raised more than $4m from about 190,000 participants, including several Hollywood stars, in the latest success for her nascent bid for president.

The fundraiser added to a series of positives for the Harris campaign on Tuesday, including the release of a new ad, an endorsement from the Republican mayor of a large city in in Arizona, and an admission from the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, that Harris posed more of a threat to the Trump campaign than Joe Biden did.

Guests on the "White Dudes for Harris" call on Monday evening not only included contenders for Harris's vice-presidential running mate - the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker; and the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg- but also the actors Jeff Bridges (famous for portraying the Dude in The Big Lebowski) and Mark Hamill, who secured a $50,000 donation during the call by delivering his renowned Star Wars line: "I'm Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you."

A news release from the organizers said the virtual gathering "shattered expectations".

"Over the course of the evening, speakers heard governors, senators, congressmen, actors and singers all speaking directly to white men around the need to organize and support Kamala Harris for president," the press release said. "Speakers spoke truthfully and honestly about the path ahead, the importance for us to connect with one another and the important role we can play in getting other white men to turn their backs on the dangerous, dark path Donald Trump is trying to march us down."

Harris, a former California attorney general and US senator who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, became the first woman to be elected vice-president when Joe Biden won the White House in 2020. She is now likely to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket after Biden halted his re-election run on 21 July and endorsed her.

Democrats responded to Harris's ascension with enthusiasm, illustrated by 170,000 people signing up to volunteer for her campaign as well as donating $200m for her political war chest in just the first week.

But Trump - Biden's presidential predecessor - and his Republican supporters, many of them white, have greeted her rise by disparaging her as a hire resulting from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

"Honestly, their dark vision for our future is just holding all of us back," Brad Bauman, a Democratic party communications consultant who helped organize Monday's call, told NBC News. "That's why we decided to start White Dudes for Harris."

Other celebrities on Monday's call were Mark Ruffalo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Scheer, Josh Gad, Sean Astin, JJ Abrams and Bradley Whitford. The call lasted over three hours.

The Zoom fundraising call came in the wake of similar, well-attended gatherings for Black women, Black men and white women supporting Harris.

There is also a "cat ladies for Harris" Zoom call being planned in response to comments from Trump's running mate, JD Vance, in which he insulted the vice-president as a "childless cat" lady. And there is a similar call in the works titled "Latino Men for Kamala". The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, is hosting a Labor for Harris Zoom call with labor leaders and members around the US on 31 July.

The white women for Harris call last Thursday raised nearly $8.5m for the vice-president and had more than 160,000 attenders.

The Black women for Harris Zoom call attracted about 90,000 participants. And the Black men for Harris streaming event, moderated by the journalist Roland Martin, saw more than 53,000 people register.

Those events also included appearances by numerous celebrities and Democratic officials.

The calls come as Harris and Trump are polling closely to each other in crucial battleground states likely to determine the election. After Biden's withdrawal from the race, the Republican-friendly Fox News poll conducted in three of the key states - Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - showed Trump and Harris were even.

Trump had previously been enjoying relatively comfortable leads.

The successful fundraising calls for Harris were anchored by news of an important endorsement in the battleground state of Arizona, as the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona's third largest city, crossed party lines to endorse Harris.

The Harris campaign also released its first video television advertisement, which describes the presumptive Democratic nominee as "fearless" and touts her bona fides as a prosecutor. The one-minute ad is the first of a $50m advertising campaign ahead of the Democratic national convention in Chicago on 19 August.

Adding to her campaign's sense of momentum since Biden declared last Sunday that he was stepping aside from the presidential race was an audio recording leaked to the Washington Post on Monday of Vance telling Republican donors that Harris taking over from Biden was a "sucker punch".

"All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch," said Vance in the recording. "The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did."