Harris touts her time at McDonald’s. Will it help?

Lyndon Johnson herded goats. Richard Nixon plucked chickens. And Bill Clinton stocked groceries.

Many presidents have held down modest jobs early in their careers. If elected in November, Kamala Harris would join that list with one of her own jobs: McDonald’s server.

The vice president has said in recent years that she worked at McDonald’s as a student, “making fries and ice cream.” That she and her campaign have mentioned this at all seems to be an acknowledgement of a powerful group of voters whose support she is trying to earn.

Somewhere along the line, as McDonald’s franchises began popping up across the country and the brand became dominant, it became impossible to ignore the low-key, dead-end aspects of working for the chain. In the 1980s, the term “McJob” entered pop culture as a swear word. Merriam-Webster still defines it as “a low-paying job that requires few skills and offers few opportunities for advancement.”

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Northwestern High School in Detroit on September 2.

(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)

For Harris and her surrogates, however, it was something to brag about. Unlike previous presidents, some of whom rarely or never spoke about their humble professional beginnings, Harris’ campaign has touted her time at the Golden Arches. In August, it ran an ad that said the vice president “worked at McDonald’s while getting her degree,” a reference to her time at Howard University in the 1980s, adding, “Kamala Harris knows what it’s like to be middle class.”

During the Democratic National Convention, several speeches highlighted the vice president’s background in fast food. Bill Clinton, famous for his love of McDonald’s, joked that Harris, if elected, would break his record as “the president who has spent the most time there.” And Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett brought up the burger giant while attacking former President Trump: “One candidate worked at McDonald’s when she was in college. The other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

At a time when Democratic candidates have consistently trailed Republicans in winning the support of working-class voters, the Harris campaign’s decision to tie the candidate to a brand beloved by large swaths of the population is a smart move. It could make her more relatable, several observers told The Times.

“It’s a clever way to appeal to working-class (voters) … who have probably worked in worse places than McDonald’s,” said David Garrow, author of “Rising Star,” a biography of Barack Obama. “There’s definitely a class aspect to it.”

It’s also a gesture possibly intended to distract from Harris’ status as a California liberal, said Emily Contois, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa.

Harris is trying to “appeal to voters across the country,” Contois said, adding that there’s a “nationalistic undertone” to McDonald’s that could also help. “Virtually every American has eaten there.”

But the subject was not without danger.

On August 29, the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news website, published a report casting doubt on whether Harris had worked at McDonald’s. It said the job was not listed on a resume she submitted a year after college and noted that biographers had also failed to mention the work. Trump’s campaign seized on the story, demanding that Harris provide proof that she worked for the chain.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff ordered food from El Cholo in Santa Monica last year.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Trump said the vice president lied about his work at McDonald’s during a campaign rally last week, and repeated the claim the next day during a news conference at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes.

“She never worked at McDonald’s,” he said. “It’s a lie. They went in, they investigated, and the fake news won’t report that. … She never worked at McDonald’s. She said she was standing over those fries when they were cooking, and it was so hard (work). She’s a liar.”

In a statement to The Times, Harris campaign spokesperson Rhyan Lake praised the vice president’s “middle-class roots,” saying they are “a key reason why she is fighting to lower the cost of living and ensure that every American has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.”

“It’s not surprising that Trump doesn’t understand that, given that he wants to explode costs for the middle class so he can give billionaires more tax breaks,” Lake said.

McDonald’s did not respond to requests for comment.

After the Free Beacon report was published, a former Republican congressman went on X to ridicule the story. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois noted that he “used to work at Hardee’s and literally never told anybody until now. It’s not in my book either. I still worked there.”

::

A stint at McDonald’s provides a curious contrast to Harris’ reputation as a foodie. She’s an accomplished diner at restaurants in L.A. and beyond, and a skilled home cook — a pastime she’s made part of her political persona.

“One of the things I love doing the most, and that just grounds me, is cooking Sunday family dinner,” she said in an Instagram video she posted in July.

Contois sees the mentions of McDonald’s and Sunday dinners as different parts of the same overarching strategy designed to help the candidate connect with voters. Harris’ McDonald’s experience, she said, “is going to reach a different audience than the ones who pay attention to the fact that she … makes a great fried chicken.”

Harris’ McDonald’s tenure gives her something in common with a significant portion of the electorate: The fast-food company has said that one in eight Americans has worked at the chain. Moreover, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said during his convention speech that he had worked there, too, laughingly explaining that he had once been employee of the month at his establishment.

Like Crockett’s pointed comments, other Democrats have cited Harris’s time serving French fries (her campaign has said she worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, in the summer of 1983) as a way to compare her life experience to Trump’s.

“Can you imagine Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s and trying to make a McFlurry or something?” Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz asked an audience in August. “He couldn’t work the damn McFlurry machine.”

::

A few 21st-century presidents have had jobs in the hospitality industry, including Barack Obama. As a teenager, he scooped ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins in Honolulu. Obama has talked about the job in recent years, including in a 2020 speech attacking Trump.

In the final year of his presidency, Obama wrote on LinkedIn that the ice cream job had taught him the value of “Responsibility. Hard work. Balancing a job with friends, family and school.” Obama, however, did not make his Baskin-Robbins experience part of his campaign message.

That may have been strategic, Garrow said. “He wanted to present himself as one of the ‘best and brightest,’ not as some average plebeian who had worked a mundane job,” Garrow said of Obama’s first presidential race.

Jerry Newman, on the other hand, believes that a fast-food job is something a candidate can show off. The author of “My Secret Life on the McJob,” a 2006 book about his undercover work in the fast-food industry, said those workers learn the importance of reliability, working under pressure and being a team player — fundamental tenets of any blue-collar job.

Harris, he said, “can point out that if she hadn’t learned those things yet, they certainly reinforced them” during her time at the chain.

If working at McDonald’s or Baskin-Robbins is something to celebrate now, it’s a change that may reflect shifting views about the value of blue-collar work at a time when a large number of Americans identify with the term “working class.”

According to an August poll by the Pew Research Center, 54% of Americans said the term “working class” described them “extremely or very well.” It also found that 62% of Republicans described themselves that way, while 48% of Democrats did so.

::

It was 95 degrees on a recent weekday afternoon, and the parking lot of a McDonald’s on Vine Street in Hollywood was scorching with heat. The restaurant’s patio provided a bit of shade for Ashley Zamarripa, 21, who said she didn’t know Harris had ever worked at McDonald’s and thought it made the vice president “more relatable.”

“When I heard about Harris, who had a job that an average person has (I work in retail), I could relate to that,” she said.

Not everyone saw Harris’ backstory as a big selling point. One man with a scraggly beard and cut-off sweatpants who declined to be named said he didn’t think the candidate’s time in the fast food industry was “earned,” noting that many people have to do backbreaking labor to survive.

But Rod Hubbard, who works in private security, said: “That someone in her position had been in the same shoes as me would appeal to me.”

With a wry smile, Hubbard explained that he had a good idea of ​​what Harris had endured at McDonald’s because he had once worked at Burger King. “It means she understands what hard work is,” he said. “She’s been there, just like a lot of us.”

Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts and researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.