Lyndon Johnson raised goats. Richard Nixon raised chickens. And Bill Clinton bagged groceries.
Several presidents have done ordinary jobs Early in their working lives. If Kamala Harris is elected in November, she will add her name to this list: McDonald’s server.
The vice president has said over the years that he has worked at McDonald’s. she was a student“Making French fries and ice cream.” That she and her campaign have referred to it seems an acknowledgment of a powerful group of voters whose support she is trying to win.
As McDonald’s franchises spread across the country and the brand’s clout grew, it became impossible to ignore the trivial, wasteful aspects of working for the chain. In the 1980s, the term “McJob” entered the pop culture lexicon as a derogatory term. Merriam-Webster It is still defined as “a low-paying job that requires few skills and offers little opportunity for advancement.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at Northwestern High School in Detroit on Sept. 2.
(Paul Sancia/Associated Press)
For Harris and her aides, though, it’s a point of pride. Unlike past presidents, some of whom have rarely, if ever, talked about their modest professional beginnings, Harris’ campaign has been touting her time at the Golden Arches. In August, It issued an advertisement It said the vice president “worked at McDonald’s while getting her degree,” a reference to her time at Howard University in the 1980s, and added, “Kamala Harris knows what it’s like to be middle class.”
Several speeches at the Democratic National Convention drew attention to the vice president’s fast-food background. Bill Clinton is well-known for his love of McDonald’s. jokingly said that if selectedHarris will break her record as the “president who has spent the most time” there. And Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett mentioned the burger giant Attacking former President Trump: “One candidate worked at McDonald’s while she was in college at an HBCU. Another was born with a silver spoon.”
At a time when Democratic candidates lag behind Republicans in winning support from working-class voters, the Harris campaign’s decision to link the candidate to a brand favored by a large segment of the population is a smart one that could make her more credible, several observers told the Times.
“It’s a clever way to appeal to working-class (voters) … who have probably worked in places worse than McDonald’s,” said David Garrow, author of the Barack Obama biography “Rising Star.” “There’s definitely a class-appeal aspect to it.”
Emily Contois, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa, said it may also have been a gesture meant to deflect attention from Harris’s status as a California liberal.
Contois said Harris is “trying to appeal to voters from all over the country,” adding that McDonald’s has a “nationalistic feel” that could help. “Almost every American has eaten there.”
But this subject has not been free from danger.
On August 29, the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news website, published a report which questioned whether Harris worked at McDonald’s, saying the job was not listed on her resume submitted a year after college and that biographers had not mentioned the job. Trump’s campaign capitalized on the story, Harris was asked to prove that She used to work for a chain.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff ordered a meal at El Cholo in Santa Monica last year.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Trump said the vice president lied about working at McDonald’s during a campaign event last week and repeated the same claim the next day during a news conference at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes.
“She never worked at McDonald’s,” he said. “That’s a lie. They went in, they investigated it, and fake news won’t report it. … She never worked at McDonald’s. She said she stood over the french fries when they were being fried, and it was very hard (work). She’s a liar.”
In a statement to the Times, Harris campaign spokesman Ryan Lake extolled the vice president’s “middle-class roots,” saying that’s “a big reason she’s fighting to lower the cost of living and make sure every American has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.”
“It’s not surprising that Trump doesn’t understand this, since he wants to raise costs on the middle class in order to give more tax breaks to billionaires,” Lake said.
McDonald’s did not respond to requests for comment.
After the Free Beacon report was published, a former Republican congressman took to X to make light of the story. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois He said that he “Worked at Hardee’s and still didn’t tell anyone. It’s not even in my book. Still worked there.”
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Working at McDonald’s makes a notable difference to Harris’ reputation as a foodie. She’s knowledgeable about the cuisine at restaurants in L.A. and beyond and is an accomplished home cook — a hobby she has made part of her political persona.
“One of the things I find most enjoyable — and keeps me grounded — is cooking dinner with the family on a Sunday,” he said. an instagram video Posted in July.
Contois sees the mention of McDonald’s and Sunday dinner as different parts of the same broader strategy, designed to help the candidate connect with voters. He said Harris’ McDonald’s experience is “going to reach a different audience than people who are paying attention to the fact that she … makes a great roast chicken.”
Harris working at McDonald’s highlights some of the similarities she has with a large segment of the electorate: The fast-food company has said that One in eight Americans Also, during his convention speech, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff mentioned that he had worked there too, laughingly pointing out that he had once worked there. employee of the Month in your branch.
Like Crockett’s scathing comments, other Democrats have slammed Harris’ time selling fries — her campaign has said she worked at a place that McDonald’s, Alameda, Calif.in the summer of 1983 — as a way to contrast his life experience with Trump’s.
“Can you see Donald Trump working at McDonald’s trying to make a McFlurry or something?” – Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz a viewer asked in August. “He couldn’t operate that damn McFlurry machine.”
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Some 21st-century presidents have worked in food service, among them Barack Obama. As a teenager, he sold ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins in Honolulu. In recent years, Obama has spoken about the job — which included 2020 speech attacking Trump,
In the final year of his presidency, Obama wrote on linkedin that the ice cream job taught him the value of “responsibility, hard work, balancing a job with friends, family and school”. However, Obama did not make his Baskin-Robbins experience part of his campaign message.
Garrow said that may have been strategic. “He wanted to present himself as one of the ‘best and the brightest’, not just some ordinary guy working a regular job,” Garrow said of Obama’s first presidential bid.
Jerry Newman, on the other hand, believes a fast-food job is something a candidate can brag about. The author of 2006’s “My Secret Life on the McJob,” which describes his undercover work in fast food, said he learned about employee reliability, working under pressure and the importance of being a team player — fundamentals of any blue-collar job.
Harris, he said, “can make the point that if she hadn’t already learned these things, she certainly strengthened them during her tenure with the chain.”
If working at McDonald’s or Baskin-Robbins is now something to celebrate, it’s a shift that reflects changing ideas about the value of blue-collar work, at a time when large numbers of Americans identify with the “working class” designation.
according to The survey was conducted in the month of August In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 54% of Americans said “working class” described them “extremely or very well.” It also found that 62% of Republicans described themselves this way, while 48% of Democrats did.
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It was 96 degrees on a recent weekday afternoon, and the McDonald’s parking lot on Vine Street in Hollywood shimmered with heat. The restaurant’s patio offered a little shade to Ashley Zamarripa, 21, who said she didn’t know Harris ever worked at McDonald’s, and thought it made the vice president “more comfortable.”
“Hearing Harris, who did what a normal person does — I work in retail — I can agree with that,” she said.
Not everyone was overly impressed with Harris’ backstory. One man with a shaved beard who declined to give his name said he didn’t think the candidate’s time in fast food was “meritorious.” After all, he said, a lot of people have to work hard to survive.
But Rod Hubbard, who works in the private security sector, said, “If someone in his position was in my position, this would affect me.”
Hubbard smiled and said he had a good idea of what Harris went through at McDonald’s because he once worked at Burger King. “That means she understands hard work,” he said. “She’s been there, like a lot of us have.”
Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts and researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
