The big event on Kamala Harris’ trip to New York two weeks ago was left off her public schedule.
A few hours after appearing on set with Drew Barrymore, the vice president was at a small dinner with Black finance leaders put together by software and investment executive Charles Phillips to ask for their ideas and help getting more Black voters connected to the reelection campaign.
The dinner had been delayed — it was supposed to have happened weeks earlier when high winds in New York made the Air Force ground Harris’ plane — but the discussion had intensified since, with reelection campaign polls and focus groups showing Joe Biden continuing to leach Black support.
The campaign is counting on Harris to help change that — both because of who she is as the first Black vice president and by deploying her in ways that go beyond anything she did in 2020 in a Black outreach effort unlike any previous presidential campaign.
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“There is misinformation that is astonishing to me. But we have to deal with it,” Harris told CNN when asked about her outreach to Black voters in an exclusive interview during a campaign swing in Las Vegas in April.
But voters aren’t the only ones who need a reality check, Harris argued: “Any suggestion and inference that we’ve got any voter in our back pocket and therefore should be able to count on their vote without earning it, I think is misinformed.”