Election Day is 13 days away. Every day of the countdown, Times Insider will share an article about how our election coverage works. Today, a reporter covering the Harris campaign explains what life is like on the road and aboard Air Force Two.
Since July, Nicholas Nehamas, a political correspondent for The New York Times, has been crisscrossing the United States with one purpose: to report on Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
“We go where she goes, we track what she says, we watch all her media appearances,” said Mr. Nehamas, who is following the vice president on the campaign trail alongside his colleague Erica L. Green, a White House correspondent.
In 2023, Mr. Nehamas, who was based in Miami at the time, joined the Politics team at The New York Times as a reporter covering the presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. After Mr. DeSantis dropped out of the race in January 2024, Mr. Nehamas began covering the Biden campaign. Then six months later, his job took yet another turn when President Biden dropped out and Ms. Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket.
Before coming to The Times, Mr. Nehamas was an investigative reporter at The Miami Herald. There he was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team that brought to light a trove of confidential files known as the Panama Papers, which exposed the offshore bank accounts of some of the world’s most powerful people, including associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Since he began covering the Harris campaign this summer, Mr. Nehamas has flown on Air Force Two with the vice president (she sometimes comes to the back of the plane to chat with reporters off the record); visited the seven most crucial battleground states, reporting from Wisconsin’s farm country and Arizona’s southern border; and spent more than 40 days on the road with the candidate.
In a recent interview, Mr. Nehamas spoke about his career and the challenges that come with reporting on a round-the-clock campaign. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Why is it so crucial to be on the ground to cover the Harris campaign?
We really want to see what voters are reacting to and what their mood is. When I covered Biden’s campaign before he dropped out, there were only a few hundred people at his rallies. It was a clear sign that his campaign was in a lot of trouble and not generating enthusiasm among Democrats. I think Harris’s smallest rally still had 7,000 people. Sometimes it’s closer to 15,000 or 20,000. You really need to be in the room to get a sense of it — to hear what music is playing and see people dancing.
Also, candidates tend to give a very similar stump speech, but they adjust it in sometimes meaningful ways as they change their message. It’s helpful to be on the ground and see that happening live. You get a much better sense than seeing it over a feed.
What is it like traveling across America, especially through battleground states?
You get to talk to a lot of people outside the rallies. Going about your day, you see where the yard signs are. You hear what people are really talking about. You get a better sense of what’s going on.
There are seven battleground states where this election is going to be decided. Harris is visiting all of them pretty frequently. My colleagues and I have gone to them all pretty frequently. There’s a lot of camaraderie on the campaign trail among the reporters.
Have you noticed any differences covering this campaign than when you covered Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign in 2023?
It’s almost not a fair comparison. DeSantis was running in a primary and he was really trying to win Iowa. He went to all 99 counties in Iowa. I did the same. Harris is running a big, national race with more than a billion dollars that she has raised since she entered the race. DeSantis was on a shoestring budget by the time the campaign was over. With Harris, we generally go to big cities; with DeSantis, we visited a lot of small towns. But the tactics are similar: Talk to as many voters as you can, through whatever medium you can. But the scale is remarkably different.
Talk to me about some of the challenges that come with covering a presidential campaign.
The speed of this beat is challenging. News often happens when the candidates open their mouths, and you have to be ready to react very quickly and write clean, accurate copy. It’s a 24-hour news cycle at this point. On a personal level, the travel is challenging. You’re on the road a lot. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s hard to buy groceries. You tend to eat not great food, and you don’t exercise as much as you want to. It’s accurate to say that I’m tired.
What do you hope readers take away from your reporting?
I hope that readers get a strong sense of who the candidates are as people, how effective they are as messengers of their vision, what that vision is and who they’re trying to help with their policies. And also, of course, to understand how campaigns work — how they use advertising, how they use “get out the vote” strategies, how they raise money. All of that is important and decides elections.
At the end of the day, people are voting for a person. I like the opportunity to try and tell a story that gives some insight into the people who are running, through their speeches, through their policies and through the ways they interact with other human beings.
How closely do you work with your colleagues who are covering the Trump campaign?
We compare notes privately all the time, just to hear what message the other campaign is putting out there, what tactics they’re using, how they’re trying to reach voters. You don’t want to cover a candidate in isolation. You want to look at what both campaigns are doing. They’re responding to each other constantly. It’s a constant back-and-forth.
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