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Vice President Kamala Harris taped three interviews this week at the Democratic National Convention, but none were with any of the 15,000 credentialed journalists here in Chicago. Instead, they were with social media influencers, including Vidya Gopalan, a North Carolina mom known to her 3.4 million TikTok followers as @queencitytrends.
Gopalan, who largely posts lifestyle content, asked Harris to reflect on their shared Indian heritage and her memories of spending time in India with her grandfather. The video, posted Tuesday, has more than 1.9 million views.
That engagement represented a recognition from the Harris campaign that reaching voters in the countdown to Election Day will require Democrats to go beyond a traditional media strategy and into new spaces.
One piece of this strategy is creating their own content, including on the popular @KamalaHQ account across platforms. The other – and arguably more significant – piece is to harness the power of influencers. There is a plan in place, officials say, to reach Americans – and particularly young voters. And that is increasingly on social media platforms.
“You have to meet the voters’ eyeballs and ears where they are – and where they are is at their lunch, during their lunch breaks, scrolling through their phone. They are sitting on the subway, scrolling through their phone. They are on the couch with the TV on with CNN, maybe on mute, scrolling through their phone. They’re walking their dog, looking at their phone,” said Alex Pearlman, a self-described “ranting comedian” known on as @pearlmania500 TikTok, where he has 2.7 million followers.
Pearlman is among the 200 content creators credentialed for the DNC this week, marking an unprecedented effort by Democrats to engage this community. There are multiple “creator lounges” across the United Center, spaces with mirrors and ring lights and charging stations where the creators, many of whom are longtime followers of one another but have never met in person, are networking and collaborating. They are on the convention floor on a special “creator platform,” prime real estate for viewing each night’s events. And they are meeting and interviewing top Democratic surrogates – including Harris herself.
The creators represent a vast swath of the internet – and, thus, a vast swath of followers. Some of them have long been political, like Carlos Eduardo Espina, who posts immigration-focused content, or Olivia Julianna, who focuses on reproductive rights and other Democratic issues. But also on hand are cooking influencers, beauty experts, comedians and sports creators.
“The DNC realizes if a bunch of people have millions of followers, if you bring 200 of them together, the reach is amplified,” said Nimay Ndolo, a current-events comic with 3.5 million followers across platforms.
But it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.
Keith Edwards, a Democratic strategist with a 550,000-strong following who interviewed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg this week, said, “Exclusivity is the name of the game. So us being here and getting access only helps us grow. It only helps them, and only helps us help them, being here,” predicting “exponential” growth for this type of engagement in future conventions.
Having access to voices like Buttigieg, he said, “legitimizes me … and also helps him get eyeballs, and then also helps me expand my audience.”
In conversations with more than a dozen content creators in Chicago this week, the influencers roundly praised the Harris campaign’s outreach as a model for Democrats. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a rising Democratic star who was on Harris’ vice presidential short list, has also been “really impressed” with the state of her digital organization.
“The burden is not on the Pennsylvanian to find the Harris campaign. The burden is on the Harris campaign to find that voter. And they’re doing an exceptional job of that: knocking on doors and showing up on your ‘For You Pages,’” Shapiro told CNN.
And for many Gen Z influencers, the week has offered an opportunity to instill some humanity in the political process.
“Social media and speaking directly to the people humanizes them in a lot of ways that they don’t realize. We’re just kind of disillusioned with a lot of institutions. We’ve grown up, especially Gen Z, watching these institutions fail us in so many different ways,” Awa Sanneh, a 23-year-old with 503,000 followers who posts on a range of topics, from the Black Lives Matter movement to her outfit of the day.
Beyond just influencers, the groundswell of support in the immediate days after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee brought with it something difficult to purchase or build: a coolness factor, from coconut tree memes to the ubiquity of the candidate on social media feeds.
“It is really cool to talk about Kamala Harris on the internet right now,” deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty said in a recent interview. “The volume of folks who are posting, who have lots and lots of followers, gives people who share content with their friends and family more coverage to do it themselves.”
And in a sign of the energy and enthusiasm for the new candidate, multiple creators CNN spoke with said they would not have been as eager to attend a convention for President Joe Biden.
“I don’t know that I have a definitive answer for you,” said Raven Schwam-Curtis, a Black and Jewish educator posting to 220,000 followers. “But I will say I’m very energized and excited, and it was a very easy yes to say yes to coming to this.”
For Schwam-Curtis, though, the question remains whether the enthusiasm for Harris can translate into action at the ballot box.
“It’s been cutesy and it’s been demure – but to what extent will the memeification of Kamala Harris get Gen Z to the polls?” Schwam-Curtis said.
