With less than two weeks until the election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are converging on Texas on Friday, an unlikely destination considering the Lone Star State is not a presidential battleground.
But between a Beyonce concert and an appearance on Joe Rogan‘s podcast, their campaign programming there almost perfectly captures the race and their respective closing arguments.
Harris’s trip to Houston is predominantly an appeal to women, with a star-studded rally headlined by Beyonce to underscore abortion access and an episode taping of researcher Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast.
Three hours away in Austin, Trump will tape his own episode of the Joe Rogan Experience and hold a press conference about the border, a pitch mostly to men.
For Republican strategist Derek Ryan, neither Harris nor Trump is approaching Texas as if it is “in play,” at least at the presidential level.
“What I do think they’re doing is using Texas to reach out to those voters in the other states,” Ryan told the Washington Examiner.
Trump is “coming to Texas to highlight the border issue,” he said, while Harris is “coming to Texas to highlight the state’s abortion ban.”
With 12 days before polls close, it is those two policy areas that are among voters’s top concerns, in addition to the economy.
To that end, the Trump campaign has promoted the former president’s press conference as one about the border, contending “Kamala’s border bloodbath is putting Texas families in danger and exposing every American to the risks of her dangerous policies.”
“Despite their empty promises of a ‘fair and humane immigration system,’ Harris’s open-border policies are far from compassionate — they’re lethal,” the Trump campaign said. “This year alone, a Salvadoran MS-13 gang member was arrested for drunk driving in Houston, the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua took over a Texas hotel, a Guatemalan illegal immigrant was accused of tossing her newborn into a dumpster, a San Antonio police officer was shot by an illegal Venezuelan immigrant, and a 12-year-old girl in Houston was brutally shackled, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death by two illegal immigrants.”
Meanwhile, Harris’s rally, which will also showcase Willie Nelson, DJ Tryfe, and Beyonce’s mother Tina Knowles, will emphasize the importance of abortion access.
Abortion is a particularly pertinent topic in Texas after state lawmakers passed a six-week prohibition on the procedure. Then last December, Texas woman Kate Cox sued the state government for an emergency process after doctors told her her fetus had trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal condition that could have affected her own fertility. It was the first post-Roe v. Wade test case. The state’s Supreme Court eventually ruled against Cox, but she traveled interstate to terminate her pregnancy before it announced its decision.
“More than any other state, the nightmare playing out in Texas for women is emblematic of the harm Donald Trump’s abortion bans have caused across the nation,” the Harris campaign said.
Besides the celebrity buzz, Harris’s rally will simultaneously boost Senate candidate Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), who is in a closer-than-expected race with incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Cruz has an average 4 percentage point lead over Allred, according to RealClearPolitics. Cruz was in a similarly close contest in 2018 against former Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, going on to win by 2.5 points.
Harris coming into Texas demonstrates how “good people can be betrayed by extreme, ideological, and failed leaders,” according to Democratic strategist Matt Angle.
“Texas is a great state with corrupt and uncaring MAGA leaders,” Angle told the Washington Examiner. “It starts with Ted Cruz, who has spent 12 years in the U.S. Senate dividing Texans against each other, promoting himself to the detriment of Texans who need a strong voice in Washington, and all the while never even trying to solve real problems faced by Texas families.”
He added, “Kamala Harris being in Texas boosts every Democrat running down ballot, and it shines a light on that in a way that warns everyone of what happens with extremism, arrogance, and corruption infect elected leadership.”
Aside from their different issue sets, Harris and Trump’s chosen messengers and selected platforms also amplify another dynamic in the election: the historic gender gap. Women are overwhelmingly supportive of Harris, as men are gravitating toward Trump.
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Brown’s podcast averaged 1 million downloads per episode in 2020 before she struck a deal with the Vox Media Podcast Network in 2024, according to the New York Times. Rogan has a much larger male-dominated audience, with 14.5 million followers on Spotify, 17.5 million subscribers on YouTube, and 19.3 million followers on Instagram.
“As for the podcasts, I think campaigns are evolving with the times,” Ryan, the Republican strategist, said. “People are either fast-forwarding or ignoring commercials on TV/streaming services, text messages are getting lost in the shuffle, and there’s a group of younger voters that probably don’t even check their mail on a regular basis. So for campaigns to reach some of these voters, podcasts seems like a really good option.”