Kamala Harris campaigned on Thursday with Mark Cuban, the controversial billionaire and former Republican donor who was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for admonishing players and referees on the basketball court.
The vice-president visited Milwaukee, Wisconsin, flanked by the Shark Tank investor and businessman who has caught headlines in recent years for alleged inappropriate behaviour.
Mr Cuban, 66, is a billionaire investor who rose to fame as one of the original “sharks” on ABC’s startup reality show.
But he has also been criticised for his conduct as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, when he racked up over one million dollars in fines by the NBA, largely for criticising players and referees.
He sold his controlling stake in the team in December 2023, following a period of instability at the organisation involving a sexual misconduct investigation against various members of staff. He was not personally accused of misconduct.
In September 2018, it was announced he would pay $10 million to women’s and domestic violence organisations after a month-long investigation into staff that included Terdema Ussery, Mr Cuban’s former chief executive.
Although he was not directly accused of sexual misconduct, the investigation criticised Mr Cuban’s handling of the scandal and negotiated his payment to the charities to avoid a fine.
Mr Cuban apologised, telling fans and staff he was sorry he “didn’t recognise it” in the 18 years he had been at the helm.
Mr Cuban was also accused personally of sexually assaulting a fan he posed with for a photo in a Portland bar in 2011.
An unnamed woman came forward to accuse Mr Cuban of touching her inappropriately in the bar, but Mr Cuban denied the charges and the charges were later dropped. He was also acquitted of charges of insider trading brought by the SEC in 2008.
Mr Cuban had considered his own presidential run, and has previously aligned himself with Republican candidates, but has come out in support of Ms Harris during the 2024 campaign.
In 2017, he said he would run for president as a Republican if he was single, describing himself as “socially a centrist but very fiscally conservative”, but criticised Donald Trump for his plans to lower taxes for wealthy Americans.
On Thursday, he and Ms Harris ran a version of the Shark Tank programme for business students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The Harris-Walz campaign said he had appeared with her to “highlight vice-president Kamala Harris’s vision for investing in small businesses and encourage supporters to vote early for vice-president Harris and Governor Walz”.
The accusations of courtside misconduct by Mr Cuban date back to 2005, when he was fined $25,000 by the NBA for running onto the court during a Mavericks game and criticising officials.
The following year, he was fined a further $250,000 for repeated misconduct. His fines total more than $1 million, and Mr Cuban has said he donates the same value of his fines to charity.
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