Last Saturday, billionaire and “Shark Tank” business co-host Mark Cuban spoke to an audience of compact business owners and undecided voters in Pittsburgh about why he supports Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid.
Later that day, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), perhaps the best-known Democratic Socialist in Congress, demonstrated for Harris at an Erie high school, citing that her economic plans mean wealthier people will pay more taxes.
Cuban and Sanders may not seem to agree on most issues, but the Harris campaign has benefited from surrogates willing to overtake a candidate from a coalition of supporters, which, as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, noted at a recent rally in Scranton , includes the likes of Sanders and former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney.
As the 2024 presidential campaign comes to a close, both parties are campaigning tirelessly in Pennsylvania in an effort to capture 19 electoral votes. But after President Joe Biden withdrew his re-election bid and endorsed Harris, she had to ramp up her campaign in a fraction of the time of former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee. So the way her campaign used surrogates is significantly different, said Alison Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg University, because Harris and Trump are running different types of campaigns.
“The Trump campaign is a mobilization campaign. He’s not trying to reach out to one more person who doesn’t already support him, and his support is baked in. You can’t add sugar once the cake is out of the oven,” Dagnes said. “So any surrogates he has, anyone he appears with, will play a much more subservient role towards him and will just be an adjunct to the ‘get out and vote for this guy.’
Most of the surrogates who visited Pennsylvania to campaign for Trump were Republican politicians or political activists, with the notable exception of billionaire Elon Musk, whose America PAC supports Trump and awards cash prizes to registered voters.
In contrast, Harris is running what Dagnes calls a “persuasion campaign,” in which it is crucial to apply surrogates to reach audiences the candidate cannot reach on his own.
“And she tries to say hello. Many of you may not know me because many people do not know who the Vice President of the United States is. So if you’re a businessman, you don’t care about politics, even a little bit, and that’s fine. Let me introduce you to someone Down to know who cares about the business and who also cares about me,” said Dagnes.
She quickly added that the Harris campaign’s pioneering apply of surrogates is not because she is a particularly delicate candidate. “That’s because our communication system has changed so dramatically in the last 10 years,” Dagnes said. It is no longer enough for a candidate to appear at a job interview on television, he must go to a place where the audience he wants to reach already exists. This meant, for example, that Trump would appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which appeals to adolescent men, and Harris would appear on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, which caters to adolescent women.
How surrogates connect with the public
In Erie, Sanders spoke in a high school gymnasium decorated with “Harris for President” signs, but there were quite a few people in the audience dressed in Bernie 2016 gear. They probably weren’t disappointed; Sanders endorsed Harris’ economic agenda over Trump’s, using familiar Bernie slogans, and criticized Trump surrogates.
“We live in a country today – and we don’t talk about it much anymore – with greater income and wealth inequality than at any time in the history of the United States,” he said, drawing raucous boos from the audience. “Donald has these people, Elon Musk and several others, who own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. The rich are getting richer and 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck. And Donald Trump, the billionaire, has this great idea that we should give billionaires more tax breaks.”
Mike McAndrew, 60, of Erie, was present during such a speech. He wore a T-shirt that said “Bernie 2016” and said he voted for the senator from Vermont in the primary this year.
“Everything he says is accurate; the rich don’t pay their fair share and protect Social Security,” McAndrew said. He added that he had seen Harris when she visited Erie a week earlier. He said he wanted to get to know her a little better and he was impressed, he even shook her hand. “A lot of the things Bernie stands for are also things she talked about.”
Musk, perhaps Trump’s most eminent and impolitic surrogate, has taken a more lateral rather than obsequious stance towards Trump. He appeared on stage with Trump at a rally in Butler on Oct. 5 and has since led “Get Out the Vote” rallies across Pennsylvania, handing out checks to some participants (whether those rallies violate state law will be the subject of a hearing in Philadelphia Monday). While October 20 rally near Pittsburgh GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick briefly joined the crowd on stage.
“I just love building technology that people find useful, and that’s what I want to do with my time,” Musk said in response to an audience question about whether he would run for office. Under U.S. law, Musk cannot be president since he was born in South Africa, but Trump mentioned that Musk would oversee the “efficiency” of his administration if he wins on Tuesday. “So I hope we can elect President Trump, and then I’ll work hard on the government efficiency department… and then I hope I can’t work in politics. I hope so,” he told the Pittsburgh audience. “So, as I said, I am doing this because I believe it is crucial to the future of the country. And if America falls, nothing else matters.”
Cuban spoke directly to a smaller group in Pittsburgh, at Duolingo’s East Liberty headquarters. Many of the listeners were compact business owners who wanted to hear from Cuban what impact Harris’ policies would have on them. He talked about her plan to provide a $50,000 tax break to compact businesses and his thoughts on Trump’s plans to impose widespread tariffs. The former president is trying to support immense companies, not compact ones, Cuban argued.
“The idea that he’s saying ‘this is just a negotiating ploy, we want to bring them to the table.’ He has no idea how it affects you. This is a compact business problem,” Cuban told the audience. “Donald Trump could care less about all the small business owners out there, and he shows it in everything he does.” Strategic tariffs, Cuban added, make sense. “Okay, but overall, tariffs kill your business.”
Self-focused candidates
One of the more controversial surrogates the Harris campaign has relied on to get its message across to voters is former GOP congresswoman Liz Cheney, who not only condemned Trump and endorsed Harris, but also appeared on stage with Harris in a series of moderated conversations with voters from the swing state. Dagnes, however, said she thought the events in Cheney were handled well.
“So that’s the authority structure, right? “If you’re a country club Republican, if you’re a Mitt Romney Republican, if you’re a Dick Cheney Republican, you’re now allowed to vote Democrat”; “There are country club Republicans in the Philadelphia suburbs who are like, ‘I just don’t know if I could vote Democrat.’ And here’s Liz Cheney saying, “Yes, you can.”
And of course, there is always the risk that someone speaking on behalf of the campaign will be dishonest or stray from the message, such as Cuban’s not-so-imaginative comment about Trump not having forceful women around him (e.g. for which he later apologized) or, in a more extreme example, a comedian making a racist joke about Puerto Rico at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden (during which He later it doubled). Dagnes said campaigns need to decide whether the potential benefits are worth the risks.
She also said the appeal of effective campaign surrogates often goes beyond the star power of celebrities, and in fact, entertainment stars may be less likely to sway voters toward a candidate than those who are perceived as more genuine.
“[Harris is] I’m not trying to say, “if you like Bruce.” [Springsteen]vote for me. He says you’re a Bernie supporter. If you trust Bernie, you can trust me. But she added that candidates and their campaigns must decide whether a surrogate should appear alongside the candidate or act as an emissary instead. Appearing on stage with Beyoncé during her speeches at a rally in Houston is one thing, but having a candidate stand there while Beyoncé sings and dances would be awkward, Dagnes adds.
Therefore, rumors that Beyoncé will appear on the closing night of the Democratic National Convention, the night when the presidential candidate officially accepts the party’s nomination, seem unlikely, she said.
“It’s not just that [surrogates] are chosen carefully, it’s about choosing the context and place carefully,” Dagnes said. “So he’s not going to put himself in the position of playing second fiddle to anyone, is he?”
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