Harris campaign begins to conduct outreach to youth organizations to win over young voters

By Camila DeChalus, CNN

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team began conducting outreach to several youth grassroots organizations shortly after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the race.

Voters of Tomorrow, a youth voting grassroots organization, said it spoke with Harris’ campaign after members reached out shortly after Biden’s Sunday announcement.

“Vice President Harris herself clearly cares about the youth vote,” said Santiago Mayer, the group’s executive director. “We’re incredibly excited to get on the ground. Start knocking on doors, start having conversations, remind young voters about what the stakes are this election, and make sure that come November, we elect Vice President Harris to be Madam President Harris.”

Some of Harris’ campaign staff, including Eve Levenson, the national youth engagement director, are expected to attend this week’s Voters of Tomorrow Summit in Atlanta, where hundreds of youth activists, content creators and grassroots organizations are set to discuss the November election.

Several youth organizers told CNN that there is renewed energy among Democratic Party members regarding Harris’ nomination. CNN’s latest polling on matchups between Biden or Harris against Trump suggests Harris outperforms Biden among young voters but still doesn’t generate the level of support that Democratic presidential candidates have had in recent elections.

“The prospect of potentially having our first woman president is really exciting to a lot of young people who have grown up never really seeing that idea come true,” Katy Gates, the president of the College Democrats of Georgia, told CNN.

Other youth grassroots organizations, such as Gen Z for Change, formerly known as TikTok for Biden – which has been openly critical of Biden in the last few months and now has endorsed Harris – told CNN that the campaign has reached out to them as well.

“In the last couple months it really felt like Biden had become unmovable on the issues that were most important to young people, like policies on Gaza, climate, immigration, for example, it really didn’t seem like they were budging at all,” said Claire Simon, the group’s communications director. “But I think we see the Harris campaign as a big opportunity for her to adopt a lot of the policies that we know will really drive young people to the polls.”

Simon told CNN that she hopes to talk with the campaign and push Harris to support some of the progressive policies her group is advocating for.

Since Biden’s announcement, Democratic youth organizations and progressive activists have capitalized on social media memes of Harris in an effort to showcase the vice president in a more relatable light.

Sohali Vaddula, national director of communications for the College Democrats of America, the DNC’s youth arm, told CNN the organization has “been really proactive about keeping up our digital engagement.”

Vaddula plans on working closely with the Harris campaign team to make sure they are using her on social media.

“We do a lot of outreach with our socials, but recently, we’re planning to do a rebrand and get even more people on there, especially people that are already influencers in the political world that have a great following on, like, TikTok and other platforms,” she said.

Biden’s team has long relied on influencers to help the 81-year-old president garner more support among young voters.

Harris, 59, has a long-standing relationship with social media influencers as well. In the 2022 midterm election cycle, the vice president sat down with several social media influencers to discuss what was at stake. Harris was also considered to be the Democratic National Committee’s top surrogate for influencer collaborations after participating in over a dozen recorded one-on-one conversations with creators about the importance of voting in the midterm elections, according to a DNC aide.

As the Harris campaign prepares for next month’s Democratic National Convention, they will also be taking advantage of working with content creators who are going to be given access to the event.

The Harris campaign has not responded to CNN’s inquiries on this matter at this time.

CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

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