Vice President Kamala Harris may have made many trips to Philadelphia or Milwaukee on Friday, but it took something different to sway apathetic voters in battleground states.
So her campaign organized a trip to Houston (Texas’ largest city, decidedly not a presidential battleground state) to meet beloved Beyoncé from the state and country music legend Willie. He was scheduled to attend Nelson’s rally. Harris’ aides hope their ability to transcend traditional politics will help them cut through the cluttered media landscape and deliver viral content.
Harris’ rally in Houston focused on the strict abortion ban enacted in Texas after Roe v. Wade’s reversal, and made such restrictions available to voters in faraway states that will soon decide this year’s election results. The aim is to issue a warning about the possibility of spread. Presidential election.
In other words, Harris’ team wants to expose what’s happening deep in the heart of Texas for the entire nation to see.
“If Vice President Harris needs to amplify the voices of women in Houston and make them heard in Madison, Kalamazoo and Pittsburgh, that’s what we need to do,” said Trey Martinez Fisher, Democratic leader in the Texas Legislature. It’s what I do,” he said.
Almost everything related to Harris’ visit to Houston is designed to generate news that reaches voters in battleground states. Before the gathering with Beyoncé and Nelson, she will record a podcast interview with popular podcaster Brené Brown. Brown, a University of Houston professor and vulnerability researcher, has an audience of millions, which skews heavily female.
It’s the latest evidence that in modern presidential campaigns, viral content on social media feeds is as desirable as local TV news corners in battleground states. Harris’ aides calculate that those stations will end up showing footage of her and the music star anyway.
Both Harris and Trump skipped the rapid-fire interviews that presidential candidates traditionally give to local TV stations. Barack Obama during the campaign and Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years ago gave numerous interviews on local TV to ensure their presence in the market even while traveling in rural areas. It was often repeated one after the other.
Harris did a few interviews last month locally, including with TV stations in Philadelphia and Atlanta, but generally focused on platforms with national audiences. Her team believes this will aggregate her appearances and increase the likelihood that her interviews will be shared beyond the markets in which they were aired.
When she appeared on two popular podcasts, “Call Her Daddy” and “All the Smoke,” this month, 26 percent of likely voters polled the poll released this week by USA Today and Suffolk University. He said he heard her story.
Then there’s the issue of using Texas as ground zero for a national debate about abortion rights. Harris used the state’s near-total abortion ban as a warning in her stump speech that doctors who provided abortion care, which was legal before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, could face the death penalty. It reminded the audience that there is a gender. 2 years ago.
The campaign features Kate Cox and Amanda Zulawski, two Texas women who gained attention as abortion rights activists after filing lawsuits over Texas regulations, as prominent surrogates who have traveled to other states. . Zulawski, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, is one of the speakers scheduled to address Friday’s rally.
Skye Perryman, a Texas native and president of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, which filed the lawsuit, said, “No state in this country has made the devastation that millions of women are experiencing after Dobbs more evident than in Texas.” “There are no states that show this.” Opposed to Texas’ abortion law. “These are issues for everyone in this country, not just those who live in states that are particularly high-profile at this time of year.”
Democrats have dreamed of making Texas a competitive state in presidential elections, but the political realities and financial costs of competing in a state with 20 media markets have left the party with limited resources. began to invest elsewhere.
A Democrat has not won a statewide election in Texas since 1994. Harris’ rally in Houston marks the first Democratic presidential candidate’s rally in Texas in the final stages of a campaign since President Bill Clinton visited San Antonio in the final days before the 1996 election. It will be done. .
“It was a different state,” said Gary Mauro, who ran Clinton’s campaign in Texas and appeared on stage with her at the Alamo on November 2, 1996, three days before Election Day. Ta. Mauro, a former state land commissioner, was also one of the last Democrats elected statewide before Republicans began asserting their dominance.
When Harris comes to Houston, she will visit Harris County, the most populous county in Texas and the heart of the Democratic Party.
Strong turnout in the county, home to 2.7 million registered voters, is absolutely essential for Democrats to have any hope of overcoming the large advantage Republicans have in rural areas of the state. The Harris County Democratic Party estimates that about 500,000 likely Democrats in the county did not vote in 2020.
Some of Ms. Harris’ aides briefly claimed this week, before it was revealed that Beyoncé would attend Friday’s rally, that her visit was meant to support Ms. Allred in her Senate race.
But she has never traveled to Ohio or Montana to support vulnerable Democratic senators. And Texas Democratic leaders appear to have been unaware of Harris’ plans for Houston until they became public.
The visit could backfire on Mr. Allred, who has sought to distance himself from Mr. Harris. All Republican senators welcomed the visit.
“Colin Allred is Kamala Harris,” the Cruz campaign blasted in an email as soon as the event was announced.
