U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) campaigns for Vice President Kamala Harris at Erie High School in Erie, Pa. Oct. 26, 2024 (Capital-Star photo)
Last Saturday, billionaire and co-host of business pitch show “Shark Tank” Mark Cuban spoke to an audience of small business owners and undecided voters in Pittsburgh, about why he supports Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy for president.
Later that same day, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), perhaps the best known Democratic Socialist in Congress, rallied for Harris at a high school in Erie, citing how her economic plans would mean wealthier people would pay more in taxes.
Cuban and Sanders may not seem to be aligned on most issues, but the Harris campaign has drawn on surrogates willing to stump for the candidate from a coalition of supporters that, as her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz noted during a recent rally in Scranton, includes people like Sanders and former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney.
As the presidential campaign of 2024 nears the finish line, both parties have campaigned relentlessly in Pennsylvania, seeking to win its 19 electoral votes. But after President Joe Biden bowed out of his reelection bid and endorsed Harris, she had to ramp up her campaign in a fraction of the time former President Donald Trump , the GOP nominee, had. So the way her campaign has used surrogates is markedly different, said Alison Dagnes, Professor of Political Science 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 one more person who isn’t already supporting him, and his support is baked in. You can’t add sugar after the cake’s out of the oven,” Dagnes said. “So any surrogates that he has, anybody that he appears with, are going to play a far more subservient role to him, and be just be kind of gravy on top of ‘get out and vote for this guy.’”
Most of the surrogates who have visited Pennsylvania to stump for Trump have been Republican politicians or political figures, with the notable exception of billionaire Elon Musk, whose America PAC is supporting Trump and giving cash prizes to registered voters.
In contrast, Harris is running what Dagnes called a “a persuasion campaign,” where using surrogates to reach audiences the candidate is not able to reach on her own is key.
“And what she’s trying to do is say ‘hi. Many of you may not know me, because many people don’t know who the vice president of the United States is. So if you’re a business person, you don’t care about politics, one whit, which is fine. Let me introduce you to somebody you do know who cares about business, and who also cares about me,’” Dagnes said.
She was quick to add that the Harris’ campaign’s novel use of surrogates is not because she’s an especially weak candidate. “It’s because our communication system has so radically changed in the last 10 years,” Dagnes said. No longer is it enough for a candidate to sit for a TV interview, they have to go where the audience they want to reach already is. That has meant, for instance, Trump going on Joe Rogan’s podcast which appeals to young men, and Harris going on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, which has an audience of young women.
How surrogates connect with audiences
In Erie, Sanders spoke at a high school gymnasium that was decked out with “Harris for President” signs, but there were a fair number of people in the audience wearing Bernie 2016 gear. They were likely not disappointed; Sanders endorsed Harris’ economic agenda compared to Trump’s, using familiar Bernie catchphrases, and criticized Trump’s surrogates.
“We are living in a nation today — and we don’t talk about this very much anymore — of more income and wealth inequality than has ever existed in the history of the United States,” he said, to loud booing from the audience. “Donald’s got these people, Elon Musk and a couple others, who own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. Rich are getting much richer and 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. And Donald Trump, a billionaire, has a great idea that we should give more tax breaks to billionaires.”
It was the kind of speech Mike McAndrew, 60, of Erie, was there for. He wore a “Bernie 2016” t-shirt, and said he voted for the Vermont senator in the primary that year.
“Everything he says is spot on; the rich not paying their fair share, and protecting Social Security,” McAndrew said. He added he had seen Harris when she visited Erie the week earlier. He said he wanted to get to know her a little better, and was impressed, even getting to shake hands with her. “A lot of the things Bernie stands for are things she talked about also.”
Musk, perhaps Trump’s most high-profile, non-politician surrogate, has taken more of a lateral position to Trump than a subservient one. He appeared on stage with Trump at an Oct. 5 rally in Butler and has been conducting get out the vote rallies across Pennsylvania since, giving out checks to some attendees (Whether those rallies violate state law will be the topic of a hearing in Philadelphia on Monday). During a Oct. 20 rally near Pittsburgh he was joined briefly on stage by GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick.
“I just love creating technologies that people find useful, and that’s what I want to do with my time,” Musk said in response to an audience question whether he would run for office. Under U.S. law, Musk can’t be president since he was born in South Africa, but Trump has mentioned a role for Musk overseeing “efficiency” in his administration should he win on Tuesday. “So I’m hoping that we get President Trump elected, and then I will work hard on the department of government efficiency … and then after that, I hope I can not be in politics. That would be my hope,” he told the Pittsburgh audience. “So like I said, I’m doing this because I think it’s critical to the future of the country. And if America falls, nothing else matters.”
Cuban spoke directly to a smaller gathering in Pittsburgh, at Duolingo’s headquarters in the city’s East Liberty neighborhood. Many in the audience were small business owners seeking Cuban’s insights into how he thought Harris’ policies would affect them. He spoke about her plan to provide a $50,000 tax break for small businesses, and his thoughts on Trump’s plans to enact across-the-board tariffs. The former president seeks to help big businesses, not small ones, Cuban argued.
“The idea that he’s saying that ‘it’s only a negotiating ploy, we want to get them to the table.’ He has no idea how it impacts you. That’s a small business problem,” Cuban told the audience. “Donald Trump could care less about all small business entrepreneurs, and he shows it in everything that he does.” Strategic tariffs, Cuban added, make perfect sense. “That’s fine, but across the board tariffs kill your business.”
Candidates keeping focus on themselves
One of the more controversial surrogates the Harris campaign has relied on to get her message to voters is former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has not only denounced Trump and endorsed Harris but appeared on stage with Harris in a series of moderated conversations with swing state voters. But Dagnes said she thought the Cheney events were well-executed.
“So here’s the permission structure, right? If you are a country club Republican, if you are a Mitt Romney Republican, if you are a Dick Cheney Republican, you now have the permission to vote Democratic,” “There are country club Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, who are like, ‘I just don’t know that I could vote Democratic.’ And here’s Liz Cheney saying, ‘Yeah, you can.’”
And of course there’s always the risk of someone appearing on behalf of the campaign going rogue or straying off message, like Cuban’s less than artful comment about Trump not having strong women around him (for which he later apologized) or, in a more extreme example, a comedian making a racist joke about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally (on which he later doubled down). Campaigns have to decide if the potential benefits are worth the risk, Dagnes said.
She also said the appeal of effective campaign surrogates often goes beyond celebrity star power, and in fact, entertainment celebrities may be less likely to push a voter in a candidate’s direction than those viewed as more authentic.
“[Harris is] not trying to say ‘if you like Bruce [Springsteen], vote for me. She’s saying, you’re a Bernie supporter. If you trust Bernie, you can trust me.” But, she added, candidates and their campaigns have to decide whether a surrogate should appear alongside the candidate or act as an emissary in the candidate’s stead. Appearing with Beyoncé on stage as she delivered remarks at a rally in Houston is one thing, but having the candidate stand there while Beyoncé sings and dances would be awkward, Dagnes adds.
It’s also why the rumors that Beyoncé would appear on the closing night of the Democratic National Convention, the night when the presidential candidate officially accepts the party’s nomination, seemed unlikely, she said.
“It’s not just that [surrogates] are chosen carefully, it’s that the context and the venue are chosen carefully,” Dagnes said. “And so she’s not going to put herself into the position of playing second fiddle to anybody, right?”
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