Univision's Kamala Harris "town hall" for "undecided Latino Voters" was actually filled with avowed Kamala supporters

Hapless media side-area for the Kamala Harris/Univision “town hall” at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — October 10, 2024

Last night’s Univision “town hall” with Kamala Harris was billed as an exciting opportunity for “undecided Latino voters” to question and evaluate the potential next President of the United States. The corporate press release from Univision advertises it explicitly as such:

But viewers at home would have been wholly unaware that this billing was false. As I discovered, having been granted the sacred opportunity to view the event from an adjacent room on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus, the carefully curated “town hall” audience was actually comprised of avowed Harris supporters.

“I already knew I was going to go for Kamala,” one town hall participant told me. “Part of the reason why I wanted to go was just, like, to also fully support her.”

“So you were already decided, before you came?” I asked another. “Yes,” she replied, declaring her support for Kamala.

The audience members I spoke to were selected with the help of a company called FansOnQ, according to the company’s founder, Conny Quintanilla, whose title for yesterday’s event was “Audience Manager.” The company puts out “casting calls” for events like the Latin Grammy Awards, which have been previously held in Las Vegas. It’s a type of company that you might not be consciously aware exists, but once you’re told of its existence, it makes perfect intuitive sense: people who want to dance at award shows are “vetted” by this particular company, perhaps for good looks and rhythmic skills. That’s the same company which filled the seats at Kamala’s town hall.

Another person told me he was able to attend because he “knows people” at an unnamed “progressive organization,” which somehow granted him the ability to get in the town hall audience. The person said he works as an intern for Rep. Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada. I’m not naming the person because he was wary of attribution. Others quoted here also didn’t want to be identified.

These aforementioned attendees were essentially just “seat fillers” — they were not the audience members who were called on to ask pre-selected questions. Those audience members were flown in from around the country at Univision’s expense. Which is a bit odd, because there would certainly have been plenty of genuine “undecided Latino voters” in Clark County, Nevada who I’m sure would’ve been more than happy to ask Kamala Harris a question.

The “seat-fillers” in action

NOTE: The non-question-asking attendees were still integral to the televisual production of the event, hence their recruitment. Uninformed viewers at home were under the false impression that the people they were watching react to Kamala’s answers were “undecided voters,” when numerous of them were in fact pre-committed Harris voters who sought to attend for the specific purpose of demonstrating their support for Kamala.

Naturally, I wanted to interview the actual question-asking attendees. However, a corporate dictate apparently came down prohibiting this. “We won’t be making them available,” Anna Negron, Director of Corporate Communications at TelevisaUnivision, told me when I asked if there would be an opportunity to interview said audience members. She would not elaborate on the reason for this strange secrecy. Reporter Mark Kellner of the New York Post asked Negron the same question, and was similarly dismissed.

So the sum total of the authorized journalistic acts that we were permitted to carry out at this event was to sit in a side room and politely view a generously provided video feed of the “town hall,” which was taped several hours before it aired yesterday. For the record, I don’t think she actually used a teleprompter, despite social media allegations to that effect. I can verify that the event was already contrived enough as it is — no need to embellish any phony stories.

Of course, most journalists covering the event simply repeated the conceit that Kamala was empathetically taking questions from “undecided Latino voters.” In other words, they simply regurgitated the corporate press release:

Her actual remarks were bereft of any real substance. The only amusing part was when she name-dropped Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General under George W. Bush, as one of her cherished Republican endorsements — adding him to the esteemed roster of Dick and Liz Cheney and myriad “national security officials” affiliated with Mitt Romney and John McCain. Perhaps Kamala calculated that the surname “Gonzales” would be extraordinarily appealing to these allegedly “undecided Latino voters.”

It’s worth briefly reminiscing about what the purpose of a “town hall” has traditionally been: for ‘townspeople’ to gather and air their concerns about issues that most affect them. (“Town halls” are actually how some small New England towns are governed — the town halls effectively become temporary citizen-led legislatures to decide questions around zoning and so forth.) Now, though, they’re just glitzy TV productions that accomplish the polar opposite of the free-flowing dialogue and debate with which the term was once associated. Indeed, these events now more resemble the production values of the Latin Grammy Awards — literally — than a forum to scrutinize candidates for public office.

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