politics

Taylor Swift‘s endorsement of vice president Kamala Harris for president on Sept. 10 was “the start of the journey” for millions of apolitical Swifties and celebrity-news fanatics, according to Lucille Wenegieme, HeadCount’s executive director. “They might click a link, but they’re not immediately going to Google, ‘Where’s all my voting information?’” she says. “Somebody else might talk about it, and it comes up in their feed somewhere else, and maybe they see a show in October. It’s multiple touch-points that tend to move folks across the finish line.”
Wenegieme, a former scientist who worked in the fashion industry before joining get-out-the-vote group HeadCount as a communications executive in 2019, has spent months observing how young music fans consider getting involved in election campaigns. An attention-getting megastar announcement might coax them into action, but so might a smaller artist at a neighborhood club.

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“Having somebody who’s relatable for you, who plays at the local spot you go to, and you can essentially have a beer with, talking from the stage about how you can go out and vote, is extremely powerful,” she says. “I don’t want to discount what folks with not as large a reach as Taylor Swift can do.”

By phone from New York, where she has worked at HeadCount for the past year, Wenegieme discussed what it’s like, as someone who mobilizes volunteer teams at concerts and festivals, to be a peripheral part of the music business.

What does your background as a scientist working on Nitrogen-fixing bacteria have to do with getting out the vote? 

It just brings me a different perspective. It’s more about not being scared to ask the stupid question. [And] to have the steep learning curve in a new industry.

What are you learning about the music business in this job?

One of the things I admired about HeadCount when I first learned about it a few years ago: You’re starting with the music fan. It’s probably the nicest way to get into the music industry. It feels like a cheat code, to have a nice, fun thing to be able to do, and not have to be in the thick of it with some of our partners, supporting artists in the industry.

What is the most efficient way to engage fans and encourage them to vote?

There’s no easy ticket. The most famous musicians have learned you can throw million-dollar [fund-raising] concerts and not do as much as you think you might — but it is contributing to that overall culture of participation. We do the in-person stuff. That’s our bread and butter. We’ve done it for 20 years. We are having those peer-to-peer conversations with people, and talking to them about why it’s important to have their voice heard. We’re totally nonpartisan and that brings a lot of trust for us.

Where do the geography-centered concert business and major political campaigns, which center on swing states, intersect?

We have different goals than the campaigns do. The campaigns are focused on reaching the smallest margins that they can to get the outcome that they want. We are about getting as many people as possible, anywhere, anytime, not just for the presidential election, not just in a midterm [election]. We have 60,000 volunteers in 38 states and D.C. A lot of times that is extremely regionally focused. These are people who are constantly going to shows in their areas, they know the venues, they know the artists coming through their market. That’s the connection. “These are the people in my town that I see shows with” — that’s what’s important, not the people who live in a specific zip code because it’s been poll-tested in a specific way.

How do you most effectively engage a new voter and coax them to register to vote?

Our team leaders are trained on the latest with voter-registration laws across the country. With music festivals, you might have somebody who traveled across state lines to get to that place. We want to make sure we can support them wherever they live. We’re not asking them to give up money on-site, we’re just asking them to do something. We keep it really functional.

In the week after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race in late July, and Vice President Harris took over his candidacy, voter registration increased 69%, according to HeadCount’s data; registration increased 54% among 18-to-24-year-olds after July 21. What was going on there? 

There was the assassination attempt, there was a vice-president nominee chosen on the Republican ticket, as well as the switch on the Democratic side — a level of unexpectedness that pierced the news cycle, so there were more young people hearing about it. And the candidate switch, for a lot of young people, was validation for something they had been telling us. They wanted to see different choices in general. Again, we don’t tell folks how to vote, but we listen a lot.

What advice would you give both campaigns about how to use music most effectively to get young people to vote for your side? 

Don’t think about music as a thing you can use. Think about musicians, and the music community, as a community to partner with, in the same way you might think of ethnic communities of people to partner with. That’s what we do.