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.