When Bruce Springsteen takes the stage in Clarkston with Democrat Kamala Harris on Thursday night, he’ll be joining a lengthy list of musicians and other celebrities who have waded into politics.
This year’s presidential campaign has been heavy with celebrity endorsements. Hulk Hogan spoke at the Republican National Convention. Taylor Swift used Instagram to endorse Harris.
In Georgia alone, Julia Roberts has stumped for the Harris campaign. Tyler Perry will join “The Boss” at Thursday’s Harris rally, which will also feature former President Barack Obama. Donald Trump appeared at a Jason Aldean concert in Macon earlier this month.
Stevie Wonder, Usher, Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion are among the A-list musicians who have popped up at Harris events in Georgia, where the race is a virtual dead heat.
Here is a sampling of celebrity endorsements over the past century:
Al Jolson
In 1920, singer Al Jolson joined the campaign trail with Warren Harding, an Ohio Republican who was president from 1921 until he died of a heart attack in 1923. Jolson even recorded a song about Harding. At the time, Jolson was one of the most famous and best paid singers, the Taylor Swift of his day. Jolson, who was white, performed in blackface, which was considered acceptable at the time.
Credit: NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM
Credit: NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM
Babe Ruth
The New York Yankees’ Babe Ruth was by far the biggest baseball star in 1928, and the longtime home run king used his clout to delve into politics.
Ruth supported New York State governor and Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith against Republican Herbert Hoover.
According to a New York Times story from 2015, Smith was a fellow Catholic, and his origins on New York’s Lower East Side reminded Ruth of his own. ‘’I wasn’t fed with a gold spoon when I was a kid,’’ Ruth wrote to a Smith campaign official named Franklin D. Roosevelt. ‘’No poor boy can go any too high in this world to suit me.”
Hoover would defeat Smith in a landslide.
Ruth in 1944 gave his endorsement to Thomas Dewey over sitting president FDR, saying the Republican New York governor had “done a good job” in Albany. At Dewey’s election-eve rally in Madison Square Garden, Ruth told the crowd: “Some people put scripts in front of some people to say what they want them to say, but I don’t have to do that.” As was the case in 1928, the Ruth-endorsed candidate ended up losing to the incumbent in a landslide.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra had a long history of interacting with multiple presidents over many decades.
He first supported FDR in 1944, joining Hollywood royalty like Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles on the campaign trail, donating money and speaking in radio addresses and at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In 1960, he stumped hard for John F. Kennedy’s winning bid. Along with his buddies in the Rat Pack, Sinatra held fundraisers and turned his song “High Hopes” into the campaign anthem.
By 1970, Sinatra endorsed Ronald Reagan as Republican governor of California and later donated $4 million to Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980. Sinatra called him “the proper man to be the President of the United States. … It’s so screwed up now; we need someone to straighten it out,” Sinatra said, according to his 1998 biography “All the Way” by Michael Freedland.
Credit: Associated Press'
Credit: Associated Press'
Sammy Davis Jr.
Sammy Davis Jr. was a supporter of JFK but was brokenhearted when he was disinvited from the Inauguration Ball in 1960 because he was a Black entertainer married to a white woman, a no-no at the time for many southern Democrats.
Twelve years later, he supported JFK’s 1960 rival, Richard Nixon, for Nixon’s reelection campaign, serving as the Republican National Convention’s Young Voters Rally master of ceremonies. In a photo that was widely circulated at the time, Davis spontaneously hugged Nixon from behind as both men grinned.
Davis told Ebony magazine in 1973 that he saw his relationship with Nixon as an opportunity to advocate for issues faced by Black Americans. “When my wife, Altovise, and I were invited to the White House after the November elections, I repeated (my recommendations),” he said at the time.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Dozens of Hollywood stars endorsed Reagan, the Republican president and former actor, for reelection in 1984, including Jimmy Stewart, Sinatra and “Terminator” actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger himself would follow in Reagan’s footsteps and become Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011.
“Ronald Reagan could throw a political punch, but he did it with courtesy, with humor,” Schwarzenegger once told a gathering at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez
Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez
Barbra Streisand
Streisand has been a devout liberal for decades and became friends with Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“They were the most appealing couple,” Streisand said in her 2023 memoir, “My Name is Barbra.”
In 2008, she actively supported Hillary Clinton in 2008 before pivoting to Barack Obama.
In her memoir, she defended her use of her fame as a bully pulpit.
“Yes, I have opinions. And it is my right to express them, just like any other citizen,” she said. “Actually, I think it’s our responsibility.”
Credit: AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain
Credit: AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain
Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey endorsed Obama early in his campaign for president in 2008. The billionaire talk show host had never publicly backed a candidate before.
“Experience in the hallways of government isn’t as important to me as experience on the pathway of life,” Winfrey told a Des Moines, Iowa, crowd in late 2007. Obama ended up defeating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination that year and beating Republican candidate John McCain in the general election.
Since then, Winfrey has gone on to endorse Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024, interviewing the vice president on the campaign trail in Michigan last month.
Credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Kid Rock
Although Kid Rock’s music when he broke out was apolitical and he performed at Obama’s inaugural event in 2009, he was an early convert to Trump 2016. “I’m digging Donald Trump,” he told Rolling Stone in early 2016. “My feeling: Let the business guy run it like a business.”
He began hosting a string of Rock the Country concert festivals that double as political takedowns of liberals. According to a Rolling Stone story from May, “Amid a sea of American flags, Trump 2024 merch and more than 25,000 fans, Kid Rock will be introduced onstage by Tucker Carlson, then launch into a set that will include riffs about open borders, high taxes” and a curse-filled denunciation of Joe Biden. The concert also featured a video of Trump “lauding Kid Rock and his fans as ‘hardworking, God-fearing rock ‘n’ roll patriots,’ before exhorting them to ‘make America rock again.’
Kid Rock appeared at the National Republican Convention in July to sing his song “American Bad A–-.” He repeatedly shouted “Fight, fight,” parroting what Trump had said after he was shot in the ear at a July 13 rally by a would-be assassin.
