Kamala Harris brings a heavy-hitter to Michigan: Oprah Winfrey
Vice President Kamala Harris is hoping her stop in the Detroit suburbs will electrify her core supporters — and she brought in a major reinforcement.
Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Harris and spoke at the Democratic convention last month, will headline the event with Harris Thursday night in Farmington Hills, Michigan, as the campaign tries to target a broad swath of voters they hope to turn out in November. The event will be livestreamed on multiple social platforms.
The campaign invited dozens of pro-Harris groups to attend the campaign stop, called “Unite for America,” as Harris looks to energize some of her earliest backers. Polls continue to show a neck-and-neck race with Donald Trump, whose campaign has appeared resilient despite a poor debate performance and efforts to hammer race-based attacks on immigration. The event is also an effort to highlight the range of groups that united behind Harris as she effectively shut down any challenge for the nomination, and who will remain vital in the sprint to November as surrogates, door knockers and fundraisers.
Nearly 70 “unity groups” were invited to participate, including Win With Black Women, Win With Black Men, White Dudes for Harris, Black Women for Kamala and Cat Ladies for Kamala — as well as some more niche organizations like Poets for Harris and Adventurers for Harris: Democracy & Dragons. The event will feature a small, in-studio audience of a few hundred supporters. Jotaka Eaddy, who founded Win With Black Women, will also join Harris and Winfrey.
Harris campaign advisers say nearly 200,000 people signed up to watch the livestream, and they’re hoping others will see it by picking up streams on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok and Twitch accounts for both Winfrey and Harris. And by holding an event advisers hope will, in part, mirror the reach of Winfrey’s long-running talk show, they’re trying to meet voters where they are.
The Farmington Hills campaign event, held at The Meridian, which is billed as a luxury event space that can hold more than 900 guests, was a welcomed celebratory respite from some of the headwinds the Harris campaign has experienced in recent days.
Just hours before the event, a pro-Palestinian grassroots organization, Uncommitted National Movement, announced it was not endorsing Harris, even as the group said it also opposes Trump and does not encourage votes for third-party candidates. The movement, which originated in Michigan and garnered more than 101,000 votes in the state’s presidential primary, cited the U.S.’ handling of the Israel-Hamas war and the vice president’s unwillingness to commit to any significant policy shifts if she were to be elected.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which counts more than one million members and has deep ties to working class voters, also declined to endorse a presidential candidate. That announcement came Wednesday, just two days after Harris sat for a roundtable discussion at the group’s Washington headquarters. The group cited a failure to find consensus with its membership, though POLITICO reported that the group’s internal polling showed roughly 60 percent of its rank-and-file members broke for Trump after Biden dropped out.
Questions also remain about how Harris will shore up key blocs of the Democratic base with less than 50 days to go until Election Day. The vice president has continued to widen her advantage among women, and she’ll swing through Wisconsin and Georgia on Friday, as she highlights the abortion issue and draws attention to the case of the young mother who died after not having access to legal abortions and timely medical care in her state.
But there are lingering concerns about Harris’ support among other groups, particularly Black men, who have for decades been the party’s second-most loyal voting bloc. The latest polling has shown Republicans making inroads, in particular, with Black men under 50.
“Black men represent a real opportunity for Harris and the Democrats, because it’s a constituency that they have won traditionally that’s drifting away, and they need to bring those folks back in the fold,” said longtime Detroit-based Democratic strategist Adrian Hemond.
“Detroit’s as good a place as any in Michigan to do it,” he adds, citing the city is “historic heart of the Black community” in the state. But he also suggested that an event headlined by Oprah would likely not be enough to sway Black men who may be on the fence about Harris.
