Harris Campaign Says She Will Meet the Press (on Her Terms)

National Elections

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By The New York Times

Published 3 months ago on

September 17, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is displayed above reporters as she speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Aug. 22, 2024. The vice president, who has granted few interviews as the Democratic nominee, is now ramping things up. But she is likely to focus on local outlets and nontraditional venues where voters get their news. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)

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She has hosted a convention, weathered a debate, held her first sit-down interview with a major television network.

Now the question for Vice President Kamala Harris’ media strategists is: What should she do next?

With no more mass-audience events remaining before Election Day, and former President Donald Trump declaring, for now, that he will not submit to another debate, Harris must determine the best way to keep introducing herself to voters who still have questions about her policies and plans for the nation.

Harris’ Largest Missteps Come From Impromptu Encounters

During her 2020 campaign and early in her vice presidency, some of Harris’ biggest missteps came during unscripted encounters with journalists. To avoid taking chances, she has granted only six interviews in the 58 days since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, three with friendly radio hosts. Even the press-averse Biden took more questions in the final two months of his campaign than Harris has in what is nearly the first two months of hers.

Her team says this is about to change, promising a series of appearances across an array of media venues, including local and national outlets, podcasts, radio stations and daytime talk shows.

On Monday, she recorded an interview with Stephanie Himonidis, a Spanish-language radio host known as Chiquibaby whose show is syndicated on more than 100 stations. On Tuesday, Harris will be interviewed by three reporters at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, the same forum where Trump, in July, faced some of the toughest questioning of his campaign.

“If you want to know the kind of things we plan to do, look at the things she was doing all year before the ticket switch,” Brian Fallon, a senior adviser for Harris’ campaign, said in an interview, referring to Harris’ regular media appearances before she succeeded Biden at the top of the ticket.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have concluded that the old-school strategy of interviews with broadcast networks and national newspapers may not be worth the risk, given that voters increasingly get their election news from a variety of less traditional sources, like TikTok influencers or celebrity-hosted podcasts.

Trump, for his part, has almost entirely avoided the gantlet of one-on-one interviews with experienced political reporters. Instead, he has sat down with a series of mostly fawning interviewers, including various Fox News pundits; Elon Musk, the owner of the social platform X who is donating millions of dollars to the former president’s campaign; and Adin Ross, an online video game celebrity who gave Trump a Rolex watch and a Tesla Cybertruck.

Trump Has Had 3 Recent Televised News Conferences

Trump has, however, held three recent televised news conferences with the mainstream reporters covering his campaign, who posed challenging questions on numerous fronts.

Harris’ campaign is particularly focused on local TV and radio stations in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where Harris sat Friday for a somewhat circuitous 11-minute interview with WPVI, the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, in between stops in Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre.

Asked for “one or two specific things” she would do to address high prices, Harris spoke for 1 minute, 52 seconds about her biography before she got around to articulating her proposals for tax deductions to new small businesses and tax credits for housing developers.

An answer for people worried about the price of groceries this was not..

Every big news network has a standing request with the Harris campaign for an interview. One potential appearance could be on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the country’s most-watched news program, which is planning its quadrennial election special on Oct. 7 and has requested interviews with both candidates.

But aides say Harris is more likely to spend time answering questions from inquisitors with smaller, more niche audiences that include many voters in battleground states. These interviewers include drive-time radio hosts and anchors from the local evening news — particularly those who, like the television reporter from Philadelphia, tend not to ask follow-ups if and when Harris filibusters or dodges their questions.

“There are big pluses to do local media; there’s no urgency for her to do national press,” said John Del Cecato, who was a media strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “There’s no soft spots that she’s desperate to keep armored. She simply has better ways to deliver her message to people than in national interviews.”

One of those ways is leveraging the power of the most influential and popular Americans who have endorsed her: On Thursday, Harris will appear in a virtual event with Oprah Winfrey, who spoke on her behalf at the Democratic National Convention.

In the final seven weeks of the race, Harris’ campaign is also shifting its focus from tent-pole events like the Democratic National Convention and last week’s debate to get-out-the-vote efforts as the first Americans begin to cast their ballots. Her campaign is planning to use interviews with local reporters — known in the business as earned media, as opposed to advertising that the campaign pays for — to drive a message that it is time to vote.

“There’s an old adage that ‘earned’ beats ‘paid’ every time on a presidential campaign,” said Kate Bedingfield, a former communications director for Biden in the White House and a deputy campaign manager for his 2020 bid. “Local media is king, and I think she should do it a lot.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Reid J. Epstein and Michael M. Grynbaum/Haiyun Jiang
c. 2024 The New York Times Company