Marianne Williamson is facing a powerful new dark psychic force — campaign debt.
The New Age author’s presidential campaign committee still owes $238,180 to various election vendors, some of whom now say she is trying to renege on the payments. Williamson suspended her campaign in January 2020.
“She’s not paying us,” Jennifer Marshall, co-founder of Next Digital Connection, told The Post. “We are a very small business, and we will be totally and utterly bankrupted if she doesn’t pay her bill.”
The North Carolina family business Marshall runs with husband Jeffery provided much of the texting and phone-banking services the Williamson campaign used to raise money and build her profile during her quixotic run for the White House, when she memorably warned Donald Trump that she would defeat him with “love.”
The Next Digital Connection bill came to $72,589, Federal Election Commission filings show. After a text message to Williamson in March reminding her that the bill was “months overdue,” Marshall said she was phoned by campaign consultant Wendy Zahler.
“Wendy wanted to [re-negotiate] down to pennies on the dollar,” said Marshall, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in May 2019. “We’re just two people who have a small company and we’re trying to do the right thing by candidates running for office and she screwed us.”
Unlike many of the other 2020 candidates, Williamson seems to be leaving some creditors high and dry while living large, burning through what remains of her campaign cash.
In January, February and March, Williamson spent roughly $490,000 — $1,930 in charges to the five-star ultra luxe InterContinental Willard hotel in Washington, D.C; and at least another $5,771 in expenditures to other high-end spots in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and New York City — almost all after she officially suspended her campaign.
There was also $1,483 to a company called “streaming for the soul” — a Netflix-style service for self-help videos.
And she maintains a coterie of at least five paid staffers who took in $30,587.
“We looked at the FEC filings and we were horrified,” Marshall said. Williamson still has $72,428 in her coffers.
A second vendor owed more than $10,000 by the Williamson campaign is not confident they will ever see the cash.
“There is very little you can do to collect on a political committee. They can’t legally shut down, but there is no one to collect on. It’s like a bankrupt business,” a rep for the company said.
“The problem with vanity runs for president is that ultimately the bill comes due — and you can’t wish those away,” Democratic strategist Eric Koch told The Post. “Marianne Williamson was never a serious candidate for president, but the least she could do is pay her bills in the middle of a global pandemic and recession that’s hitting small businesses, like the vendors she’s stiffing, very hard.”
Williamson became a minor celebrity after entering the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, with breakout viral performances in the first two debates. Despite having no prior experience in elected office, she managed to raise more than $8 million for her effort and hire a staff of 20 operatives spread out across Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
A self-help guru, Williamson is the author of 13 books, several of which were bestsellers. She first rose to national prominence in the early 1990s with regular appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” She has been described as the talk show host’s spiritual advisor. Williamson has long disdained in-depth policy matters in favor of “politics of love” — the title of her most recent book.
“When enough minds are vibrating on a high enough level, then all lower thought forms will fall of their own dead weight,” she opined in a 2011 tweet.
She’s lived briefly in a geodesic dome in New Mexico, been endorsed by Kim Kardashian and officiated Elizabeth Taylor’s last wedding to Larry Fortensky.
Williamson is far from alone in ending her campaign larded with debt. While some candidates like New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders owe nothing, it’s far more common to leave large debts lingering — sometimes for years.
In his brief run for the White House last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio racked up more than $100,000 in debt, which remains unpaid. California Sen. Kamala Harris, whose campaign imploded in December, still owes more than $1 million. Even former President Obama didn’t pay off his 2012 presidential campaign debt for three years.
“We asked to renegotiate; we did not propose pennies on [the] dollar. We are in [the] process of resolving all of our debts,” Williamson said in a statement to The Post when asked about the Next Digital Connection arrears. “The next report will show the debt down to $212,000. It’s a process and that’s what takes time. Some bills are settled and some will take longer.”