Vice President Kamala Harris spent a remarkable $1.5 billion in her hyper-compressed 15-week presidential campaign. But in the days since losing to President-elect Donald J. Trump, her operation has faced questions internally and externally over where exactly all that cash went.
Despite her significant financial advantage, Ms. Harris became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades, ceding every battleground state to Mr. Trump.
Her cash-rich campaign spared no expense as it hunted for voters — paying for an avalanche of advertising, social-media influencers, a for-hire door-knocking operation, thousands of staff, pricey rallies, a splashy Oprah town hall, celebrity concerts and even drone shows.
It was a spree that averaged roughly $100 million per week.
The frenzied spending has led to second-guessing among some Democrats, including whether investing in celebrity-fueled events with stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé was more ostentatious than effective.
Since her loss, the Harris operation has pressed supporters for more cash with desperate-sounding solicitations, stirring fears about post-election debts. “Is there anything we can say?” came one email asking for cash last Monday.
The biggest expense during the race was advertising. Between July 21 and Oct. 16, financial records show that the Harris campaign spent $494 million on producing and buying media, a category that includes both television and digital ads. The total sum through the election is said to be closer to $600 million.
Yet starting in October, her campaign was actually narrowly outspent on broadcast television by Mr. Trump, according to data from the ad-tracking service AdImpact.
The ads were just one piece of a campaign that had enough cash to spend on seemingly everything. There was $2.5 million directed toward three digital agencies that work with online influencers, records show. The campaign spent around $900,000 to book advertising on the exterior of the Sphere venue in Las Vegas in the last week of the race, two officials said. There were drone shows in the sky before the debate in Philadelphia in September and at a Pittsburgh Steelers game in October.
