Reflection: Harris and Q&As

The question-and-answer session that California Senator Kamala Harris held after delivering her stump speech in Somersworth on July 14 was, in some ways, very ordinary. She called on voters randomly from the crowd in a high school cafeteria and they challenged her on tough, if unorthodox, issues. One urged her to commit to gender parity in her cabinet like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and another called on her to endorse Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's no-first-use of nuclear weapons policy.

(She appeared to commit to the first, but declined to give her position on the second, for the record.)

California Senator Kamala Harris appeared at a high school in Somersworth on July 14, her first appearance in New Hampshire since her breakout performance in the first debates.

As Harris turned to face the next questions on homelessness and health care, I was reminded of a line from Vote First or Die,  a 2017 book on the New Hampshire primary by former RealClearPolitics reporter Scott Conroy. "Iowa caucus-goers tend to ask candidates questions," Conroy wrote. "New Hampshire primary voters, on the other hand, demand answers."

Indeed, earlier that weekend, a voter called South Mayor Pete Buttigieg's plan to add six justices to the Supreme Court "profoundly undemocratic" and another accused him of "pandering to the black vote." Buttigieg supporter Mike Sloan, 66, of Dover remarked afterwards that the Q&A put his candidate on the spot. "Some of them were brutal," he said. Trish Howle of South Berwick, Maine called his decision to hold the Q&A for twenty-five minutes "a bold move."

I heard more difficult questions the next day, when former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke was asked by a frustrated attendee in Manchester "did you grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth?" and more pointedly, "who are you?" Others pressed him on Medicare for All, Social Security and, in a flashback to his ill-fated confrontation with fellow Texan and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro from the first debates, Section 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Many matched his high-energy style and prefaced their questions with personal stories when he handed over the microphone.

So Harris was not the first candidate to encounter challenging questions in the Granite State. But, as the rising star in the Democratic field fresh off her breakout performance in the first debates, Harris did not need to open herself up to questions in a high school auditorium 75 miles north of Boston. The frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, did not take questions at all from voters when I saw him in Dover or Portsmouth. Neither did Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in Hampton or Windham. Both spoke for almost forty minutes, took selfies and left for the next campaign event without risking any kind of cross-examination in front of a crowd.

Harris took that risk. And the way her campaign conducted the Q&A left her particularly vulnerable to difficult subjects. She did not have attendees write down questions on pieces of paper, which could have been screened out, like the Buttigieg campaign in Dover. And unlike the Warren campaign in Peterborough and Derry, she did not put in place a lottery system, which makes bird-dogging — a technique where activists sit near the front, make eye contact with the candidate throughout the speech and then hit them with a specific policy question during the Q&A — more difficult.

Without those defenses, Harris and the local business owner who introduced her, Emmett Soldati, seemed to select the voters out of the crowd together. She was relatively exposed to angry questions from disaffected voters as well as tricky questions from well-trained activists. While low-polling candidates like former Maryland Congressman John Delaney or even New Jersey Senator Cory Booker face those voters and activists all the time, leading contenders like Harris who hold large rallies usually find a way to avoid them.

So especially compared to the other four top-tier candidates, I thought Harris' Q&A was quite impressive. She could have rode her momentum from the first debates and taken a victory tour into New Hampshire without facing challenging questions, but she didn't. And in my opinion, she handled those answer-demanding New Hampshire voters as well as, if not better than, Buttigieg, whose supporters raved about him afterwards — "so eloquent," "very smart," "articulate," "extremely well-spoken," "intelligent," they said.

The openness from Harris also rebutted one of the central criticisms of her campaign, voiced by former Obama advisor David Axelrod among others: that she is too cautious. The way she speaks is often slow and deliberate and the set design, if you will, of the town hall was carefully constructed — voters were seated on stage behind her and there was a large elevated platform for television cameras across the back of the room — but the Q&A was bold and daring.

A large elevated platform for television cameras stretched across the back of the room. There were also six tables for print media in the corner.

The strangest question that Harris fielded on the afternoon came from a young man who said that a town in Minnesota had recently banned the Pledge of Allegiance. I expected him to follow the lead of President Donald Trump, who tweeted at the time that the decision represented "stupidity and disloyalty," but the questioner revealed that he was an atheist and wanted Harris to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge as president.

"Only in Somersworth," Harris laughed, a reference to the self-styled Rainbow City known for its LGBTQ community and Indonesian immigrant population. She then made clear that she would not change the Pledge, while underlining his right not to recite it. "I love pledging allegiance to the flag," she said.

For me, the response highlighted a central tension of Harris as a candidate. She is extraordinary careful when delivering answers or speaking in a debate, but her demeanor is relaxed, good-humored and almost carefree in all the little spontaneous moments in between. She made jokes and interacted with the audience throughout the appearance. When she was criticizing corporations like Amazon that pay no taxes, she asked the audience how many of them paid no taxes. A child near the front raised their hand. "Bless your heart honey, when you turn 18 you will," she laughed before jumping back into her stump speech.

Charles Knox, a Portsmouth resident who had seen 8-9 candidates and put Harris in his top three, remarked afterwards that the California Senator had a good sense of humor. "She seems to have fun," he told me.

More than her mixed-race heritage or the historic nature of her candidacy, I think it is that combination of serious, high-minded rhetoric and easygoing, fun-loving personality that reminds Democratic voters most of former President Barack Obama. She would do well to lean into that comparison, as well as continue to hold relatively open Q&As, to fight the perception that she is too calculating.

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.