Hollywood for Harris: Meet the Political Consultants Advising Celebrities on How to Leverage Their Star Power for Maximum Effect

As soon as Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic presidential candidate four weeks ago, the phones started ringing at WME. “Everybody wants to get involved,” says Matt Kaplan, who heads up political affairs at the agency. “Everybody wants to know how they can help.”

Kaplan is the go-between who connects the campaign and convention organizers with the agency’s roster of stars. Natalie Tran performs a similar role at CAA. She, too, has seen a surge of excitement. “I’ve received more incoming in the last eight days than I have since January,” Tran says.

A handful of Hollywood players are so politically active that they hire their own strategists to organize fundraisers and track legislation. Others do it entirely themselves — researching issues and firing off tweets when the mood strikes. But most lean on consultants to help them make the most of their political engagement. As celebrities have gotten more active in the Trump era, the agencies have taken on more responsibility for helping them figure out what works and what doesn’t.

“There are strategic ways to give your money away and not strategic ways,” says Hannah Linkenhoker, who launched a political consultancy at ICM and now helps clients through entertainment law firm Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. Linkenhoker’s goal is to give the “smartest strategic advice about where to make the biggest difference with the reach you have.”

Since President Biden handed her the baton on July 21, Harris has relied on star power to build a sense of energy and momentum around her campaign. Right off the bat, Beyoncé gave her the rights to her song “Freedom,” and Megan Thee Stallion performed at a massive rally in Atlanta on July 30.

Former President Trump took note, saying at his Aug. 3 rally that Harris was only able to pack the arena because she had entertainers supporting her. “I don’t need entertainers,” he said. “I fill the stadium because I’m making America great again. That’s our entertainment.” (Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan both appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.)

On the Democratic side, Zoom fundraisers have been the most popular form of celebrity engagement, with Mark Ruffalo, Jeff Bridges, Jane Fonda, Connie Britton and Nick Offerman among those getting involved.

“There’s this amazing swell of energy,” Shonda Rhimes said on the virtual fundraiser “CT Women for Harris.” “This is a story I could not make up. There are twists in here that I could not have contemplated in any show I wrote. But I think that they’re amazing, because this is real — this surge is real.”

“Some of our clients are great on these Zooms,” Tran says. “They’ve got a great Zoom presence.” She adds, “The goal is to do whatever is most authentic for the client.”

According to Tran, clients might shy away from doing local TV interviews in battleground states because they don’t feel they’re the best messengers on local issues. If the campaign is seeking to reach younger voters, an Instagram story or a TikTok video might be a better fit.

The Harris campaign has been in touch with the agencies to find clients to reach particular audiences. “If a campaign is looking to mobilize Gen Z voters at a rally in Michigan, we can take that to a Gen Z influencer who really resonates with that audience and is looking to get involved,” Kaplan says.

Clients are also coming to the agency looking for opportunities to help. “We tailor a custom, bespoke strategy for our clients, so they’re maximizing their impact,” Kaplan says.

Sometimes the advocacy is less about persuading voters than it is about prodding those who are already engaged to do more. Elsa Collins, a political and social impact consultant, says that stars can be effective at getting young supporters to participate in actual campaign work. “Celebrities have a unique ability to break through the noise,” she says. “They’re helpful in recruiting volunteers.”

The Harris campaign will be a three-month sprint, and advisers are scrambling to get involved fast. “We are all moving mountains to get our celebrity clients plugged in in the right way with the presidential campaign to win this race,” Linkenhoker says.

Hollywood has been an important source of Democratic cash for decades. But it’s not the largest source, and big checks from studio moguls are less important in an era of rising small-dollar contributions. What Hollywood has not lost is its ability to draw crowds. “The thing about celebrity activism is people pay attention to it,” says Lara Bergthold, a longtime political adviser. “Nobody cares what a bunch of oil executives think.”

Anthony Nownes, a political science professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has sought to quantify the impact of celebrity endorsements. He says his students generally think there’s no impact, and his colleagues think the whole question is silly. “They assume that no one would be stupid enough to be affected by a celebrity endorsement,” Nownes says.

But that’s not the case. In 2016, Nownes did a survey of voters’ attitudes toward Hillary Clinton, testing how they were affected by endorsements from George Clooney, Tom Hanks and America Ferrera. “Some of their negative emotions about her decreased,” he says. “They had less anger and anxiety toward her.”

The effect isn’t huge, but it’s discernible. “The consensus among people who study this stuff is that celebrity endorsements can, under some circumstances, affect how people feel about the candidates — and affect who they vote for.”

An endorsement functions as a sort of mental shortcut, giving voters a quick way to size up a candidate, says David J. Jackson, a professor at Bowling Green State University. “In an ideal world, a citizen is completely informed. But most people aren’t going to do a research project to figure out who to vote for; they find a shorter pathway. We can’t condemn people for taking these shortcuts.”

That doesn’t mean that all endorsements are effective. Jackson says the studies, which borrow from research on product endorsements, show a real impact under the right conditions. “A carefully chosen celebrity, properly deployed, can have an effect,” Jackson says. The bigger the star, the bigger the effect. Endorsements can also work to validate a candidate in a community where they might need help. In 2016, Bernie Sanders got a boost in the Black community thanks to support from rapper Killer Mike.

A sustained commitment — multiple appearances, for instance — has more impact than a single tweet. “Whoever is the most well known, the most likable and the most credible is the best endorser,” Jackson says. “And whoever also has a significant following through a para-social relationship.”

The political science research is at an early stage of development, but it appears to confirm the intuitions of campaign professionals. Nownes says that when students argue that endorsements don’t work, he has a ready reply. “You think that,” he’ll say to them. “But you know who doesn’t think that? The people who run campaigns.”

Celebrities have their own considerations to worry about, such as offending half their audience by taking a side. Going back decades, many have been more comfortable doing nonpartisan get-out-the-vote promos. They also worry that endorsing every Democrat every four years can dilute the impact. “If you do them too often, the effect can wear down,” Jackson says. “If you do it all the time, you get written off as ‘Here they are again.’ You don’t want to get dismissed that way.”

But there is also a genuine upside to political engagement — a sense of fulfillment and purpose. Collins says that knocking on doors and registering voters can be invigorating. “We’re fueling each other but also getting refueled by our community,” she says. “It is part of how we keep going.”

Opposition to Trump has been a catalyst for a lot of folks to come off the sidelines in the past eight years. But for those who are most committed, it’s not just about the presidential race.

“We’ve turned our attention to funding pro-democracy secretaries of state in states across the country,” Linkenhoker says.

Linkenhoker’s clients are also interested in electing state supreme court justices and state lawmakers.

In Arizona, for example, she has focused on giving money to Democratic candidates in Senate and House districts that overlap — thereby doubling the impact — in an effort to flip both houses from red to blue. “That would give Governor Katie Hobbs a governing majority to do some really incredible things for that state,” Linkenhoker says.

At worst, such engagement just adds to the noise and clutter of a campaign. “It doesn’t always land,” Bergthold says. “I’m sure there’s a scattered wasteland of videos that never went viral.”

But the belief that celebrity support can backfire and hurt the campaign — which even some in Hollywood subscribe to — is generally not supported by the data. “Overall, most candidates would rather have celebrity endorsements and roll the dice than not have them,” Jackson says.

Nownes agrees. “It’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t work,” he says. “But campaigns keep doing it. They have a sense it works. And the evidence is building that this stuff might be kind of important.”

He adds, “Would you rather have Taylor Swift endorse you or not?”