Harris gets her cavalry: Top group plans to spend $10 million-plus to boost her

One of the nation’s most powerful political groups tasked with helping female candidates is readying a massive investment to improve Kamala Harris’ public standing.

EMILY’s List, the political action committee whose aim is to elect female candidates supportive of abortion rights, says it will be spending “tens of millions of dollars” to defend and prop up the vice president during the 2024 election.

Such an investment in support of a sitting vice president is politically unprecedented. And it reflects the lack of broader efforts that have been made to date to help bolster the vice president amid persistently low approval ratings.

It also underscores the growing recognition that Harris may play an outsized role in what is sure to be a tough election. Republican presidential candidates have made it clear they will be using the specter of a Harris presidency as a way to hurt Joe Biden’s chances at reelection, particularly by raising questions about his age and capacity for the job.

“She is a boogeyman that Republicans can [and will] use when it comes to pushing their message,” a senior Republican strategist said, speaking anonymously to discuss election season strategy frankly. “A President Harris would be even worse than a President Biden because she campaigned as a progressive fighter and had to moderate herself when she became Biden's running mate. And to be completely frank, she's smart. She's an accomplished prosecutor. She was a United States senator. And she does have the resume to match.”

Laphonza Butler, the president of EMILY’s List, told POLITICO that the effort is not to redefine but to “remind” voters of the politician that electrified enough of the party as a freshman Senator to have the juice to run for president.

“We're going to tell the story about who she is, what she's done, support her at every turn and really push back against the massive misinformation and disinformation that's been directed towards her since she's been elected,” said Butler, a longtime Harris ally.

At this point, the PAC is at the beginning of planning the exact scope of the investment, but Butler confirmed it will be in the range of tens of millions of dollars. When asked what the organization would spend the money on, Butler said she would not “take anything off the table at this point.” The group, she added, would target certain types of voters on various platforms.

“Some age groups and demographics get their information from things like YouTube or from TikTok. For some demographics, they are much more interpersonal and in terms of how they get and disseminate information,” Butler added.

In 2020, EMILY’s List spent about $10 million after Harris was announced as Joe Biden’s running mate. The group has also managed the Twitter account “Madam Vice President” which tweets and retweets, what it sees as, Harris’ accomplishments in office.

But there is a belief that Democrats largely need to do a better job of defining the vice president as she’s endured stumbles and harsh media coverage. Harris aides and allies have often been frustrated with, what they perceive to be, a lack of a full-throated defense of her from the White House and fellow Democrats during the toughest times of her vice presidency.

“The White House team themselves didn't fully understand early on the differences that when you have a woman in this role, it has to look different. You have to do it differently. You can't just do it the way you would with a white man, because again, people have never seen it before,” one Harris ally told POLITICO. "Once that narrative, as you say, kind of got set in and, you know, that doesn't mean it's accurate.”

While former chief of staff Ron Klain was seen as one of Harris’ loudest defenders, there were those in her orbit who worried his departure would leave a vacuum. Instead there’s been a more coordinated effort to defend the vice president with the entry of Jeff Zients as chief of staff and Ben LaBolt as communications director.

Labolt said the West Wing and Harris teams are in “lockstep,” adding it was incumbent to defend Harris from misperceptions and attacks.

“It's critical to be proactive and reactive here. You always want to be more proactive than reactive. As much as Republicans are out on the campaign trail, I will say that we know that there can be some outrageous things and some things that aren't true or are filled with misinformation,” Labolt said. “If you allow a lie to flow that [goes] unchecked, people start to repeat [it], people start to believe it. And we're not going to allow that to happen.”

In the backdrop is the 2024 campaign, which has put Harris in a more prominent position and further compelled Biden world to knock down insinuations or chatter that there are doubts about her. Since the campaign began in April, Harris has been front and center, doing the most fundraisers (four) for the reelection. The campaign says she’s slated to do at least five in June alone.

Harris' allies say she feels much more comfortable in the position more than two years in. Behind the scenes, staff has worked to get Harris to be less scripted. Multiple times over the last few months, Harris has simply ignored prewritten remarks or notes and instead spoke off the cuff, a break from the more stilted and scripted speeches she would give earlier in her tenure. Staff believes she is getting more positive receptions from audiences.

Allies point to her speech after touring a slave castle in Ghana, fiery remarks in Tennessee after two legislators were expelled from the state House for mounting a demonstration in favor of gun control and an abortion speech at Howard University where she walked around the stage without a teleprompter or notes as evidence of her revised approach.

“It's a reminder of how much of a strong fighter the vice president is. I found I was missing it myself and was and was thirsty for it,” Butler said, after the Howard event.