Here Comes Barack Obama Fighting for His Old Friend Kamala

Kamala Harris is bringing in the biggest of big guns—her old friend, Barack Obama—as she battles for victory with just three weeks until Election Day.

The former president is set to rally for Harris Thursday evening at the University of Pittsburgh in the nation’s largest swing state, which could decide the winner of the 2024 presidential race. Other “special guests” are also expected to attend, the campaign says.

A spokesperson for Obama told the Daily Beast that he will be focused on the high stakes of the election and on reelecting the state’s Democratic senator, Bob Casey, for whom he put out an ad on Thursday. Obama’s team will announce more campaign stops he'll make for Harris in the coming days.

The pair have been in regular touch since 2020, the Obama spokesperson shared. And over the past few months, Obama has helped raise $80 million for the Harris campaign, cultivating relationships with online creators and filming dozens of digital ads.

Michelle Obama is also doing her part to turn out voters for Harris with her long-standing “When We All Vote” project.

In a way, the couple are returning a favor. The vice president and the former president met at a California fundraiser two decades ago, and Harris was in the crowd as a San Francisco district attorney when Obama launched his campaign in 2007. She knocked on doors and raised money for him, even serving as his campaign co-chair in the Golden State.

Years later, the two were close enough that he called her “the best looking attorney general in the country,” a comment for which he apologized very soon thereafter in a phone call to Harris.

The Obamas were among the last prominent Democrats to back Harris during the ticket shake-up in July. But they released a video endorsement by the end of her first week as the presumptive nominee. They were both primetime speakers at the Democratic National Convention, where the former president cracked a raunchy joke about the size of Donald Trump’s crowds and his wife urging the audience to “do something.”

Last month, Barack Obama helped raise $4 million for the Harris campaign at a glitzy Los Angeles fundraiser, where Jennifer Coolidge, Conan O’Brien, Rob Reiner and Vanessa Williams were among the attendees.

The Thursday get-out-the-vote rally in Pennsylvania is Obama’s first big appearance on the 2024 campaign trail. Harris needs his star power as she and Trump are virtually tied, within a single point of one another.

It’s anyone’s race in the Keystone State, where mail-in voting has already begun. With more electoral college votes than any other battleground, Pennsylvania is likely to decide the winner of the election. Obama personifies the huge amount of resources the Harris campaign is throwing at the state.