Harris Endorsed for President by 88 Hollywood Execs, Business Leaders
Category: News & Politics
Via: jbb • one month ago • 15 commentsBy: Todd Spangler (Variety)
Everyone Knows Harris - Walz 2024 is GOOD for American Business!
VP Kamala Harris has garnered support for her 2024 presidential campaign from executives spanning multiple industry sectors including Hollywood in a new open letter signed by 88 business leaders.
Signatories to the letter, first reported by CNBC, include James Murdoch, founder and CEO of investment firm Lupa Systems and former CEO of 21st Century Fox — whose political leanings are sharply divergent from those of his father, conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Hollywood names on the list include Peter Chernin, co-founder and partner of the Chernin Group holding company; Jeff Bewkes, former CEO of Time Warner; Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and former CEO of Paramount Pictures and Fox; and Michael Lynton, chairman of Snap and former CEO of Sony Entertainment. Also signing the letter is outspoken billionaire Mark Cuban, a co-host of ABC's "Shark Tank" and former owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Not surprisingly, the letter's signatories include Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former studio exec who was a major fundraiser for President Biden before Biden dropped out of the race. Katzenberg is currently founder and managing partner of investment firm WndrCo.; prior to launching his ill-fated Quibi streaming venture, he was CEO of DreamWorks Animation and head of Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Pictures.
The letter does not call out Donald Trump by name. Harris' election "is the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy," the letter says. "With Kamala Harris in the White House, the business community can be confident that it will have a President who wants American industries to thrive."
The business leaders touted Harris' "strong record of advancing actions to spur business investment in the United States and ensure American businesses can compete and win in the global market" during her tenure as VP to President Biden. "She will continue to advance fair and predictable policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment, and she will strive to give every American the opportunity to pursue the American dream," it says.
Other execs signing the letter include Maverick Carter, CEO of the SpringHill Co. (co-founded with LeBron James); Ted Leonsis, CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, who owns the NBA's Washington Wizards, WNBA's Mystics and the NHL's Washington Capitals; Charles Phillips, former president of Oracle, ex-CEO of Infor and current Paramount Global board member; and NBA great Earvin "Magic" Johnson, chairman and CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises.
Other notable names on the list, who are longtime Democratic boosters, include Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president of Emerson Collective; John Doerr, chairman of VC firm Kleiner Perkins; Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury Secretary; and Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock Partners and executive chairman of LinkedIn.
Other Hollywood execs who have backed Harris include Netflix executive chairman Reed Hastings. Celebs endorsing her include George Clooney, Shonda Rhimes, Mark Ruffalo, Jane Fonda, Nick Offerman, Mark Hamill, Jeff Bridges and J.J. Abrams.
Here's the text of the letter with all of the signatories, in alphabetical order (via CNBC):
We endorse Kamala Harris's election as President of the United States.
Her election is the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy. With Kamala Harris in the White House, the business community can be confident that it will have a President who wants American industries to thrive. As a partner to President Biden, Vice President Harris has a strong record of advancing actions to spur business investment in the United States and ensure American businesses can compete and win in the global market. She will continue to advance fair and predictable policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment, and she will strive to give every American the opportunity to pursue the American dream.
- Roger Altman, Founder & Senior Chairman of Evercore
- Shellye Archambeau, former CEO of MetricStream
- Carl Bass, former CEO of Autodesk
- Tom Bernstein, President and Co-Founder of Chelsea Piers
- Afasaneh Beschloss, Founder & CEO of Rock Creek
- Jeff Bewkes, former CEO of Time Warner
- W. Michael Blumenthal, 64th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and former CEO of both Bendix and Unisys
- Rosalind "Roz" Brewer, former CEO of Sam's Club; former CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance; former COO of Starbucks
- Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox; Chairwoman of Teneo; Founding Partner of Integrum Holdings
- Maverick Carter, CEO of The SpringHill Company
- Ken Chenault, Chairman & Managing Director of General Catalyst; former Chairman & CEO of American Express
- Peter Chernin, Co-Founder & Partner of TCG
- Tony Coles, Chairperson & former CEO of Cerevel
- Tim Collins, Founder, CEO, and Senior Managing Director of Ripplewood
- Ron Conway, Founder & Managing Partner of SV Angel
- Robert Crandall, former President and Chairman of American Airlines
- Mark Cuban, Various entrepreneurial endeavors and a "shark" on Shark Tank
- Richelieu Dennis, Founder and Executive Chair of Sundial Group of Companies
- Barry Diller, Chairman & Senior Executive of IAC and Senior Executive of Expedia; Former Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Fox, Inc.
- John Doerr, Chairman of Kleiner Perkins
- Arnold Donald, former CEO of Carnival Corporation
- Blair Effron, Partner & Co-Founder of Centerview Partners
- Jose E. Feliciano, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Clearlake Capital Group
- David P. Fialkow, Co-Founder & Managing Director of General Catalyst
- Anne Finucane, former Vice Chair of Bank of America
- Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Chief Executive of E.L. Rothschild
- Ken Frazier, former Executive Chairman, President & CEO of Merck
- Mark Gallogly, Co-Founder and Managing Principal of Three Cairns Group; Co-Founder of Centerbridge Partners
- Chad Gifford, Former Chairman of Bank of America
- David Grain, Founder and CEO of Grain Management
- Logan Green, Chairman and former CEO of Lyft
- Daniel J. Halpern, Co-founder and CEO of Jackmont Hospitality
- Bruce Heyman, Former U.S. Ambassador to Canada and former Managing Director of Private Wealth at Goldman Sachs
- Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments; Chairman of Starbucks
- Roger Hochschild, former CEO and President of Discover Financial Services
- Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock Partners and Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn
- Glenn Hutchins, Chairman of North Island or Co-Founder of Silver Lake
- Blake Irving, former CEO of GoDaddy
- Tony James, former President, CEO & Executive Vice Chairman of Blackstone; Founder of Jefferson River Capital
- David Jacobson, Senior Advisor and former Vice Chair of BMO Financial Group; Former U.S. Ambassador to Canada
- Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Chairman and CEO, Magic Johnson Enterprises
- Brad Karp, Chairman of Paul, Weiss
- Jeffrey Katzenberg, Founder & Managing Partner of WndrCo
- Ellen Kullman, President and CEO of Carbon3; former Chair and CEO of DuPont
- Todd Lachman, Founder of Sovos Brands
- Chris Larsen, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Ripple
- Jeff Lawson, former CEO of Twilio
- Ted Leonsis, CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment
- Aaron Levie, Co-Founder & CEO of Box
- Ed Lewis, former Chairman and CEO of Essence Communications, co-founder Essence Magazine
- William M. Lewis, Jr.
- Michael Lynton, Chairman of Snap, Inc., former CEO of Sony Entertainment
- Tracy V. Maitland, President and Chief Investment Officer of Advent Capital Management
- Helena Maus, CEO of Archetype and Marker Collective
- Marissa Mayer, co-founder and CEO of Sunshine Products, former CEO of Yahoo!
- T.J. McGill, Co-Founder of Evergreen Pacific Partners and Suzanne Sinegal McGill, Co-Founder of Rwanda Girls Initiative
- Danny Meyer, Founder & Executive Chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group
- Dustin Moskovitz, Co-founder and CEO of Asana
- Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford
- Anne Mulcahy, former Chairman and CEO of Xerox
- James Murdoch, Founder & CEO of Lupa Systems; former CEO of 21st Century Fox
- Laxman Narasimhan, former CEO of Starbucks
- Indra Nooyi, former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo
- Peter Orszag, former Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget and CEO of Lazard
- Deven J. Parekh, Managing Director of Insight Partners
- Sean Parker, Founder of Napster; Founder and Chairman of Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy
- Charles Phillips, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Recognize; former President of Oracle and former CEO of Infor
- Laurene Powell Jobs, Founder and President of Emerson Collective
- Penny Pritzker, 38th U.S. Secretary of Commerce; founder and Chairman of PSP Partners
- Vasant Prabhu, former CFO and Vice-Chair of Visa
- Spencer Rascoff, Founder and CEO of 75 & Sunny Ventures; Co-Founder and former CEO of Zillow
- Punit Renjen
- Rachel Romer, Founder of Guild Education
- Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury Secretary; Senior Counselor at Centerview Partners
- Kevin P. Ryan, Co-founder, MongoDB, Business Insider, GILT Groupe, Zola, Pearl Health, Affect Therapeutics, and Transcend Therapeutics
- Faiza J. Saeed
- Dan Schulman, former President & CEO of PayPal
- Jim Sinegal, Co-Founder and Former CEO of Costco
- Dan Springer, former CEO of Docusign
- Tom Steyer, Founder and former Co-Senior-Managing-Partner of Farallon Capital
- Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp
- Scott Stuart, Founding & Managing Partner of Sageview Capital
- Larry Summers, 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury and President Emeritus of Harvard University
- Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder & CEO of Chobani
- Daniel Weiss, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Angeleno Group
- Steve Westly, Founder and Managing Partner of The Westly Group
- Ron Williams, former CEO of Aetna
- Robert Wolf, former CEO of UBS Americas
Harris - Walz 2024 is good for America and for American Business!
What exactly has Biden/Harris done for the business community during the last four years besides higher taxes and more regulations and restrictions?
Biden economic policies have resulted in record high income and corporate profits which have resulted in record high stock prices!
Which specific policies resulted in high income and corporate profits.
Don't tell me you're anti-union!
(Have you ever heard of union pension plans?)
Apologies for the sarcasm . . .
As many people find out (much too late in life) you can't live very well on Social Security alone.
Many Labor unions have created Pension Plans for their workers. Supplemented Social Security, many of their retirees live fairly well.
Some of the better pension plans buy stocks (and the better ones often "beat the market")-- and the money they make goes directly to union members!
So in that way higher stock prices don't only help the wealthy-- it really helps union members (AKA "Mostly Democrats")
And accuse them of price gouging.
I read some of the names on this ‘list’ and saw that almost all of them are well known leftists, so this letter is no surprise…….and probably a waste if time in their part.
So, Harris/Walz received the endorsements of lenders, vulture capitalists, defense industry magnates, healthcare scammers, and leaders of tourism/entertainment.
Where's the endorsements from the productive economy? Biden has dumped a lot of green onto Green Alternatives but they don't seem to be very prominent in the list of endorsements. Biden instituted a free cash for electronic chips policy but where are they located in that list? What's does it indicate when Anheuser-Busch will risk everything to endorse an influencer, like Dylan Mulvaney, but won't take a stand on Harris/Walz because it's too controversial?
That list of endorsements should serve as a warning. The expectation appears to be that Harris/Walz will be good for skimmers, scammers, flimflam artists, carney barkers, fearmongers, warmongers, and the host of neoliberal parasites thriving under Democratic governing.
Trump's staff and cabinet members are disavowing him in mass...
Well, gee, that's swell. But Trump won't be setting the policy agenda for a Harris/Walz administration. And the list of business endorsements for a Harris/Walz administration would seem to be motivated by self interest in an expected policy agenda.
These business leaders apparently expect that a Harris/Biden administration would allow their businesses to prosper. It would be wise to take a closer look at who is on that list. Those endorsements suggest that skimmers, scammers, flimflam artists, carney barkers, fearmongers, warmongers, and neoliberal con artists expect to be favored by a Harris/Walz administration. The expectation appears to be that Harris/Walz will prioritize global liberal institutional autocracy rather than domestic democracy.
Unlike the list of business endorsements for a Trump/Vance administration which would never seem to be motivatated by self-interest in an expected policy agenda. (because no Republican would ever do anything like that!)
Oooops-- I "inadvertently" failed to put the sarcasm tag there....
Oh, the horror!
How could any voter vote for someone who's term in office benefits any voters!
Didn’t people like that used to endorse Republicans? All week long, the Right has been complaining about Harris wanting to tax the super rich (the people in your list qualify - especially lenders and “vulture capitalists”), and how it will destroy the economy. Yet even those people support Harris over Trump. Compelling.
People who used to work with Trump are either in jail, or endorsing his opponent. Other people who have endorsed Trump include the Taliban, and members of the Klan. Other endorsers of Trump are people who focus excessively on restricting women or LGBT people. I mean, if we’re talking about endorsements serving as warnings, there ya go.
Maybe no matter who you are, if you just think about it a little, you realize that Harris is an easy choice over an incompetent, narcissistic, psychopath like Trump.
You’re right, even Trump should be voting for her.
Biden this...Biden that...
You're argument is very persuasive... good job! (I bet now that people have heard it-- none of them will vote for Biden in the upcoming election!)