Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted wealthy donors in the Hamptons over the weekend, emphasizing different aspects of her agenda than those featured at the Iowa State Fair a week before.
“I believe in capitalism, but capitalism is not working for most people,” the California senator told a star-studded crowd at the East Hampton home of movie producer Jamie Patricof.
Harris also insisted to her audience that private health insurance will still be available under the health-care plan she proposes, attempting to settle an issue she struggled with earlier in her campaign.
“I have not been comfortable with Bernie’s plan,” Harris said in the Hamptons, referring to Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan, which she cosponsored and which would eliminate private health-insurance plans. She originally said she was on board with eliminating private plans should she become president, but she has since backtracked, saying that while she is “committed to reining in the private insurance companies,” it “has to happen over a period of time.”
“People think, ‘Well, maybe is this going to mean that I need to, that I’ll have to worry about not being able to see my doctor,’” Harris said last month, before promising that, “you can keep your doctor” under her plan.
The former California attorney general also appeared at Martha’s Vineyard on Friday and Saturday, in events where tickets sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Former vice president Joe Biden, who currently leads the crowded Democratic field, has made fundraiser appearances in Cape Cod, Mass., and Rehoboth Beach, Del., and also plans to visit the Hamptons. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the other two top contenders in the race, have pledged not to attend high-dollar fundraisers.
Harris is currently polling fourth nationwide behind Sanders, Warren, and Biden, according to the RealClearPolitics average.