Vice President Kamala Harris will appear this week on an episode of “Call Her Daddy,” one of the world’s most popular podcasts.
The feature on the podcast, which garners millions of listeners who are known as the “Daddy Gang,” is another marker of the Harris campaign’s efforts to reach women and younger voters.
Harris and “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper had an “in-depth conversation” about reproductive rights and “other critical issues important to women,” the vice president’s campaign told The Washington Post on Friday. In a statement, the campaign said that the podcast’s audience of young women made it a “prime forum” for Harris to speak about “the future of abortion access” in the United States. The interview was taped Tuesday.
Representatives for Cooper did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket in July, Harris has made reproductive rights a key issue of her campaign. She has said she’ll push Congress to pass a national law codifying abortion rights and attacked former president Donald Trump’s stance on the issue, characterizing current restrictions on the procedure as “Trump’s abortion bans” during appearances on the campaign trail.
Last month, a live-stream event for Harris in Michigan hosted by Oprah Winfrey featured multiple speakers who shared deeply personal stories related to reproductive rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. The speakers included family members of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after she did not receive timely medical care following a rare complication from taking abortion pills. That same week, Harris added an impromptu campaign stop in Georgia after ProPublica published reporting that found that Thurman and a second woman, Candi Miller, had died in the state because they could not access legal abortions or proper medical care.
For months, Harris’s campaign has leveraged campaign events and online fervor to mobilize support for Harris and her policies. But the “Call Her Daddy” interview is a new direction for the campaign’s strategy.
The podcast has its origins in the raunchy tales of Cooper and her then-roommate, Sofia Franklyn.
The pair began the podcast in 2018 and aired about 80 episodes together focused largely on sex and dating in New York City. It became extraordinarily popular, particularly among young women, and the hosts answered written questions from listeners seeking advice every week.
After Cooper and Franklyn had a falling-out, Cooper became the podcast’s sole host and inked a three-year deal with Spotify in 2021. In August, Cooper announced that she had signed a multiyear, $125 million deal with SiriusXM for “Call Her Daddy.” This summer, NBC tapped Cooper to be part of its programming for the Paris Olympics, hoping she would help bring in more female viewers.
While Cooper’s podcast originally revolved around sexually explicit stories, she has since taken it in a new direction, bringing on guests and exploring relationships, mental health and women’s empowerment in conversations with them.
In October 2022, a few months after Roe was overturned, Cooper aired a video episode of “Call Her Daddy,” showing her visiting and interviewing staff at a North Carolina reproductive health center, where antiabortion protesters had gathered outside.
In appearing on the podcast, Harris’s campaign said she was “seizing this opportunity to reach voters where they are — particularly women in battleground states.”
“Call Her Daddy” episodes are typically released on Sundays and Wednesdays.
Sabrina Rodriguez contributed to this report.
