Eighty-eight corporate leaders endorse Harris in new letter, including CEOs of Yelp, Box

WASHINGTON — Eighty-eight current and former top executives from across corporate America have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in a new letter shared exclusively with CNBC.

Among the signers are several high-profile CEOs of public companies, including Aaron Levie of Box, Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp and Michael Lynton, chairman of Snap. 

Other signers appear to be issuing their first public endorsements of Harris since she became the de facto Democratic nominee in July.

They include James Murdoch, former CEO of 21st Century Fox and an heir to the Murdoch family media empire, and crypto executive Chris Larsen, co-founder of the Ripple blockchain platform.

Other notable signers are philanthropist Lynn Forester de Rothschild, private equity billionaire José Feliciano, Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson, and D.C. sports magnate Ted Leonsis, owner of the NBA's Washington Wizards, WNBA's Mystics and the NHL's Washington Capitals.

The three-page list also includes a slate of longtime Democratic political donors, like Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr, Insight partners Deven Parekh, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder and managing partner of Wndr and former chairman of Walt Disney Studios.

Another subset of names are people who have supported Harris in particular since her political campaigns in California, like the philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, and NBA Hall of Famer and billionaire businessman Magic Johnson.

More than a dozen of the signers made their fortunes on Wall Street: Tony James, former president and COO of Blackstone and founder of Jefferson River Capital; Bruce Heyman, former managing director of private wealth at Goldman Sachs; Peter Orszag, CEO of Lazard; and Steve Westly managing director of the Westly Group and a former Tesla board member. 

Still more are prominent in Silicon Valley, including the venture capitalist Ron Conway, entrepreneur Mark Cuban and former LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman.

The lion's share of the 88 signers who endorsed Harris are former CEOs of major public companies.

They include former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and former Paramount and Fox Inc. CEO, former Merck CEO Ken Frazier, Logan Green former CEO of Lyft, former GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving, former Ford CEO Alan Mulally, former Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan and Dan Schulman, former CEO of PayPal.

Considering how long the list of names runs, the endorsement letter itself is relatively short.

"The best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy" is by electing Harris president, the writers say.

They also argue that Harris would "continue to advance fair and predictable policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment" if she were president.

The reason for the long list and the short letter is because the letter itself was not written to convince the general public to vote for Harris.

Instead, its purpose is to serve as a well-timed political show of force for Harris, who is locked in a very tight race, with the first presidential debate just four days away.

Both Harris and Trump have spent the past week rolling out their dueling economic visions, ahead of the Sept. 10 debate, hosted by ABC.

Harris outlined proposals to support small businesses that feature a plan to increase a tax deduction for startup expenses by 10 times, up to $50,000. 

She also proposed lifting the top capital gains tax rate to 28% for people making more than $1 million a year — up from the current 20% rate, but far lower than the 39.6% level that President Joe Biden has proposed.

Harris said she dialed back Biden's top rate, in part, because her goal is to encourage more private sector investment.

Trump laid out his own competing economic agenda on Thursday in New York, where he called for the creation of a government efficiency commission designed to root out fraud.

He also pledged to cut the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for companies that make their products in the United States.

Trump has also earned support from a number of prominent Wall Street and private sector backers, including Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

The letter's initial organization can be traced back to four top Harris supporters: Roger Altman, senior chairman of Evercore, Blair Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners, the former American Express CEO Ken Chenault and Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox.

The genesis of the project was described to CNBC by a person familiar with the process, who was granted anonymity to describe how it came about.

Altman, Effron, Chenault and Burns organized the effort, and then brought the letter to the Harris presidential campaign as a way to showcase the vice president's support within the business community.

The full text of the letter and list of signatures is below.