Can celebrity endorsements win the U.S. presidential race for Harris-Walz?

Celebrities are lining up to show their support for Kamala Harris — but will those endorsements translate into votes?

Today on Commotion, Atlanta-based Refinery 29 Unbothered writer Brea Baker joins guest host Rad Simonpillai to talk about the celebrity glow emanating from Harris's campaign, and whether it could have a downside come election day.

Rad: Celeb endorsements, they're nothing new. You've been following this game for a long time. Have you seen it like this before?

Brea: Yes and no. When Obama first ran in '07 to '08, there was a lot of cultural energy around Obama being really driven by celebrities and people in positions of power saying, "We have to take advantage of this moment." I think we saw the same thing when Hillary Clinton ran — a lot of celebrity support, especially from women in Hollywood. I think what we're now seeing is a much more condensed version, so it's making it a lot more obvious that the endorsements are coming out, like, dozens each day.

Rad: We didn't really see this kind of support until Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Are you surprised that Kamala has become a magnet for all kinds of celebrities?

Brea: I'm not, and I think it speaks to how scary and frustrating Trump's ascent has been — that in spite of all of the mess-ups, the racism, the misogyny and the people he's appointed now denouncing him, he's still allowed to take up so much space in the GOP. I think people were so frustrated, but Biden was so unappealing that anything other than these two was going to excite people. And so even though this is not how it went for Kamala Harris when she ran for president in 2020, and certainly not how it was initially after she was made the VP, people were just excited for it to be not Biden and not Trump.

If Kamala Harris plays her cards right and the campaign is effective, they'll be able to translate some of that initial energy into actual excitement for their vision. So we can't really rest our laurels on the endorsements, but it's definitely been a really great fundraising strategy for them. 

Rad: As far as reaching their audience, how important are these endorsements in these early days of the presidential campaign?

Brea: I think what she needs in these early stages are visibility and amplification more than anything because the opposition has been building a campaign for much longer. Yes, she's been on the ticket, but it's very different being someone else's vice versus establishing a narrative that puts you at the centre. And so she's got to do all of that in about 100 days, and she's got to do well enough for people to trust her. The endorsements are really good for putting her in front of a wide range of audiences: young voters, women, people of colour, Black people specifically, people who are also ideologically in different spaces. That's a really important first step again for fundraising, but also for the name recognition and reminding people that this is no longer a Biden-Trump campaign.

But again, she can't spend the whole 100 days just trying to get visibility. She has to translate the reach into organic energy for her. Three months from now, we're not going to still be talking about the fact that Kamala Harris did [Beyoncé's] Freedom for the campaign video. It will fizzle out, and people will be left in the ashes wondering was there ever a platform, or was it all smoke and mirrors? So we don't want it to get to a place where people become resentful of the endorsements because there's nothing behind it.

Rad: Right. So then for those celebrities who are doing the endorsements and who are making her visible right now, what for the next hundred days is their job?

Brea: I think for the more visible, but also more controversial celebrities, it's kind of "Open up your wallets and step out of the way." The reality is that she's already being painted as this coastal elite, California, out-of-touch person. For her to get battleground states specifically in middle America, she's going to need to prove that she is accessible and thinking about people. Celebrity endorsements will only take her so far. For a lot of middle America people, they're going to be like, "What do I care what George Clooney thinks of the president? George Clooney and I live very different lives."

But there are some celebrities who occupy this kind of quasi-activist state, where either the work that they've done touch on politics and specific issues, or their lives, and they become advocates for those issues. Those people can be really powerful funders, but also storytellers for the campaign. But I really think Kamala is going to need to lean into the everyday person — the union leaders, the people who were just on strike all last year, families of those impacted by police violence and immigration — and talk about what policies she has that's going to look different from the last four years. Because if people were as excited about the last four years, Biden wouldn't have needed to drop out.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Brea Baker produced by Jess Low.