Second gentleman Doug Emhoff has made more than 30 campaign stops in the five weeks since the Democratic National Convention, stumping for his wife in over a dozen states. This week in Texas, he swung through three cities, ate at Whataburger and boosted other Democrats on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s only been two months and a couple of days since President Biden decided not to seek reelection. This was an unprecedented situation,\u201d he told a San Antonio audience on Monday, adding: \u201cWe needed somebody to step into the breach \u2026 and that person happened to be my wife, Kamala Harris.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, former first lady Melania Trump has not been seen on the campaign trail in the 10 weeks since the Republican National Convention, where she did not speak. Known for keeping a low profile, she has been even less visible this election cycle than in 2016 or 2020. At an April fundraiser, one of the few political appearances she has made this year, she collected payment for speaking, CNN reported Monday.<\/p>\n
Over the past few weeks, Melania Trump\u2019s public presence has primarily been limited to social media, where she has released videos promoting her forthcoming memoir, due out Oct. 8. On Thursday morning, she is slated to sit for a TV interview \u2014 her first in more than two years, according to Fox News \u2014 to promote her book and discuss former president Donald Trump\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is huge, because we don\u2019t hear from Melania a lot,\u201d \u201cFox & Friends\u201d host Lawrence Jones said when co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who will conduct the interview, announced it on air.<\/p>\n
The contrasts reflect the personalities of the candidates and their spouses \u2014 and highlight the facts of the race, which Vice President Harris joined in July after Joe Biden\u2019s exit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe [Harris] campaign needs every available surrogate on deck to help get the message out,\u201d said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist. \u201cThe Harris and Walz camp have to reach as many voters as they can, so they\u2019re expecting a lot out of the spouses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, meanwhile, has no qualms about breaking with convention, and after two campaigns and one presidential term, he and his wife are known to Americans.<\/p>\n
The differing strategies have also extended to the vice-presidential candidates.<\/p>\n
Gwen Walz, wife of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), has appeared at 30 events across the country in the past month, the majority of them solo, according to the campaign. Though the wife of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Usha Vance, has also met voters on the trail, she has largely traveled with her husband rather than headlining independent engagements. The Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to requests for a full list of her events since the convention.<\/p>\n
The contrast between the campaigns was evident at stops in New York last week.<\/p>\n
At a Sept. 18 rally on Long Island, Trump described calling his wife to brag about his crowd sizes and ask her, \u201cHow great am I?\u201d He also indicated he had not read her book because he was too busy.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo out and buy it,\u201d Trump told supporters. \u201c \u2026 And if she says bad things about me, I\u2019ll call you all up and I\u2019ll say, \u2018Don\u2019t buy it; get rid of it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The same night, Emhoff spoke during an event in Brooklyn, where he offered a retort to Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), who had said Harris \u201cdoesn\u2019t have anything keeping her humble\u201d because she doesn\u2019t have biological children. (Harris is stepmother to Emhoff\u2019s two children.)<\/p>\n
\u201cAs if keeping women humble, whether you have children or not, is something we should strive for,\u201d Emhoff said. \u201cIt is not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Politicians\u2019 spouses have long held a unique role in campaigns, as they\u2019re able to talk about the candidates in a way no one else can. That\u2019s a role Emhoff has embraced. He has followed a fairly traditional playbook for a campaign spouse, analysts say, and he\u2019s seen within the campaign as Harris\u2019s chief validator.<\/p>\n
Emhoff has appeared at 32 events in the five weeks since the Democratic convention, according to the Harris campaign. He gave a 14-minute speech at the convention, and has since made stops from Florida to Arizona. This week, he stopped by a Pennsylvania field office before heading to Texas.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Melania Trump bucked tradition by declining to speak at the Republican convention, where she delivered remarks in 2016 and 2020. Though she has long preferred privacy, making her lack of participation unsurprising, experts said her absence is still notable.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad the Republicans nominated anyone else, there would\u2019ve been the expectation that that person\u2019s spouse be out and about, actively campaigning in the same kind of high-profile way that Doug Emhoff has been,\u201d said Katherine Jellison, an Ohio University history professor who studies first ladies.<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment about Melania Trump\u2019s involvement.<\/p>\n
While her distance from Trump\u2019s campaign isn\u2019t seen as hurting her husband\u2019s standing with his base, strategists said Melania might help him appeal to other blocs if she campaigned \u2014 especially as polls show the former president lagging Harris among female voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not polling well with suburban women in these toss-up states and having Melania out there talking about kitchen table issues could [help],\u201d Bonjean said.<\/p>\n
In her book promotion videos, Melania has sometimes commented on politics \u2014 blaming gas prices and global unrest on Biden administration policies \u2014 but also on subjects as varied as her nude modeling and her renovation of the White House Rose Garden. Last week, she also tweeted to promote her 2024 Christmas ornament collection and a \u201climited edition necklace celebrating Lady Liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n
With candidates at the top of the ticket facing the most public scrutiny, the spouses of vice-presidential nominees generally have more flexibility in how much to campaign, Jellison said, noting that neither party\u2019s approach this election cycle has been atypical.<\/p>\n
Gwen Walz has stumped in a dozen states, meeting with educators, military families and LGBTQ advocates. She talks about reproductive rights and school shootings, tells voters the story of how she and Walz met as teachers, and hands out her great-grandmother\u2019s gingersnap cookies.<\/p>\n
Usha Vance spoke at the Republican convention, introducing her husband and calling their relationship an \u201cexample of the American Dream.\u201d In the 10 weeks since, she has traveled to some of his engagements, recently greeting voters at a North Carolina sports bar and attending a Georgia dinner where her husband spoke.<\/p>\n
Whatever candidates\u2019 spouses choose to do during a campaign has the potential to influence voters, experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does matter a great deal,\u201d said University of Pennsylvania art history professor Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, who has studied first ladies and their portraits. \u201cWe all hope, regardless of who that person is filling the job, that the person who is closest to them is being supportive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff has made more than 30 campaign stops in the five weeks since the Democratic National Convention, stumping for his wife in over a dozen states. This week in Texas, he swung through three cities, ate at Whataburger and boosted other Democrats on the ballot. \u201cIt\u2019s only been two months and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}