John Fetterman’s TikTok Whisperer – The New York Instances

Newt Gingrich was not pleased. It was the night time of Dec. 6, minutes earlier than the U.S. Senate race in Georgia was referred to as for Raphael Warnock, and over on the Fox Information present “Hannity,” the finger-pointing for Herschel Walker’s imminent loss had begun. One main offender: TikTok.

TikTok? The Chinese language-owned social media platform, which hadn’t even existed in the beginning of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, needs to be banned “for nationwide safety causes,” Mr. Gingrich mentioned. “However so long as it’s authorized,” he continued, “we’ve got to study to compete in a spot like that, as a result of that’s the place Technology Z will get such a excessive p.c of their info.”

“We’ve got to discover ways to be aggressive inside it,” he added.

That’s one — and sure the one — level on which Mr. Gingrich and Annie Wu Henry would agree.

At 26, Ms. Henry — or @Annie_Wu_22, as she’s recognized on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok — had been a comparatively low-level staffer since July on Senator-elect John Fetterman’s marketing campaign in opposition to Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, when she took over Mr. Fetterman’s TikTok account.

“John already had this superb comms workforce working for him, and he himself had been a Twitter man for years,” Ms. Henry, mentioned on a video name from her condominium within the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. She was sporting sweats and a hoodie (“very on-brand right this moment,” she mentioned with chuckle). “However we have been in a position to transfer his voice and his message to different platforms,” she mentioned.

And people different platforms have been even “extra necessary than it might need been usually,” Ms. Henry mentioned, as a result of Mr. Fetterman couldn’t be out on the path after his stroke in Might.

Ms. Henry rapidly turned, in keeping with Mr. Fetterman’s director of communications, Joe Calvello, their “TikTok Queen.” The account accrued greater than 240,000 followers in three months, with three million likes and tens of hundreds of thousands of views. Ms. Henry’s was in a position to make the enjoyable critical, and the intense enjoyable; and her motto — in life and on TikTok — is “embrace the cringe.” That’s, let the world see you as your messy, genuine self.

‘Belief Younger Individuals’

After all that you must have a candidate who’s prepared to allow you to do that. “John isn’t an Instagram dude” — polished, fastidiously curated — “and it additionally wouldn’t be him to place him on TikTok dancing round,” she mentioned. “But when we are able to use a sort of a bizarre, quirky sound and edit our messages to be a bit, nicely, not messy, however not superrefined, it aligns with who he’s, who this marketing campaign is.”

A few of her hits: the video of Dr. Oz boasting about rising up “south of Philadelphia” adopted by a map displaying that on the opposite aspect of the water is … New Jersey, overlaid with Smash Mouth’s “All Star” (“Someone as soon as instructed me the world goes to roll me/I ain’t the sharpest device within the shed”).

One other one in all her more cutting examples: a trippy TikTok duet of the heavy steel puppets in Psychostick’s “Numbers (I Can Solely Rely to 4)” with Dr. Oz being unable to rely the variety of homes he owns.

Whereas she didn’t create Mr. Fetterman’s response to Dr. Oz’s notorious crudités video, by which he complains concerning the value of “crudités” and conflates the Philly grocery shops Wegmans and Redner’s, she did have a eureka fund-raising second. For any donation above $5, donors would obtain a sticker that learn: “Wegners: Let Them Eat Crudité.” In a short time, the cash rolled in.

“Annie is like this generational pressure,” mentioned a younger political operative generally known as Memes. He runs a Twitter account referred to as @OrganizerMemes, an aggregator for intelligent political photos and texts, which additionally serves as a spot the place harried younger staffers can vent with out being outed to their bosses. (Memes is 25, works in politics and wish to preserve his job, therefore the anonymity.)

He considers Ms. Henry an in depth good friend, although they simply met non-virtually for the primary time in Georgia, when Ms. Henry made a last-minute resolution to fly to Georgia and assist get out the Asian vote for Senator Warnock through the runoff.

“Younger persons are typically not trusted on campaigns to do stuff,” Memes mentioned. “Annie is what occurs once you belief younger individuals to do what they’re good at.”

‘She Will Get What She Needs’

Ms. Henry grew up in a rural, deeply conservative city in York County, Pa., the one youngster of Tom and Beth Henry, each particular training lecturers. She was adopted in China at 13 months.

When her exhausted and thrilled dad and mom have been handed their new daughter, Mr. Henry mentioned, the nurse instructed them, “This one could be very proud, she is going to get what she needs in life.”

From a really early age, her dad and mom mentioned, injustice would make her head explode. Her liberal however devoutly Methodist dad and mom despaired once they couldn’t get their daughter to go to church with them as soon as she realized what homosexual marriage was, and that their church wouldn’t enable it.

“I believe as a result of she was adopted in China and we had only a few different ethnic races in our city, she might need felt like an underdog herself,” her father mentioned. “Typically she was picked on. However when she noticed another person being picked on, she was livid.”

She acquired her first smartphone in highschool and was tweeting concerning the 2012 election earlier than she may vote. 4 years in the past, she led the Black Lives Matter protests in her largely white hometown.

And it was her father who first instructed her about Mr. Fetterman. “When he was mayor of Braddock, I admired him for actually serving to individuals who have been down and out, for standing up for the widespread particular person,” Mr. Henry mentioned. “When he introduced he was fascinated with working for Senate, I instructed Annie, ‘This can be a man that you must take into consideration. That is somebody you may help.’”

She graduated from Lehigh College in 2018 — her honors thesis was concerning the intersection of id and social media — after which labored a sequence of jobs: organizing for a few native Philadelphia politicians and doing social media for a bridal firm to pay the payments.

Firstly of the pandemic, she wrote an essay that acquired consideration about coping with her ethnicity for the primary time and feeling really afraid as an Asian American in a rustic the place the president was calling Covid-19 “the China Flu.” Sporting a masks in public, she would remind herself to “look pleasant” and never sneeze or cough.

Final 12 months, she made her first viral tweet with a good friend: a Cease Asian Hate meme that acquired hundreds of thousands of views, helped alongside by reposts from celebrities together with Chrissy Teigen and Ellen Pompeo.

Sophie Ota, Mr. Fetterman’s digital director, employed her on the finish of July. The following few months, Ms. Henry mentioned, have been a blur. There have been no days off. There was no time to take a look at what pundits have been saying concerning the predicted “pink wave,” and Ms. Henry and different workers members assiduously tuned out the information.

Ms. Henry was additionally one of many solely individuals on the marketing campaign who had a automobile, which meant she was driving co-workers from one a part of the state to the opposite, logging about 1,000 miles every week; the joke was that she had memorized the Pennsylvania turnpike, and knew all the perfect relaxation stops and low joints. (At one level the compliance officer, who checks on staffers’ bills, checked out what number of lattes she was shopping for and wished to know who she was shopping for espresso for day by day. They have been only for her.)

Whereas she and Mr. Fetterman have been typically somewhere else, she would flip up at occasions early so she may shoot and publish photographs of the crowds, the strains, the individuals. At most occasions there was a tracker: a man from the Oz workforce who monitored the goings-on.

“That’s actually widespread,” Ms. Henry mentioned, “however this man was there largely to see if he may report John messing up phrases so they might make enjoyable of John’s well being. He recorded John’s children too. There are methods to do that the place you’re not impolite and disrespectful.” Ms. Henry had a last phrase of contempt: “And he was utilizing a camcorder.”

Ms Henry has a reasonably excessive on-line profile other than her Fetterman connection. Her private Instagram account (which has greater than 80,000 followers) alternates info on methods to get entangled preventing racism and defending abortion rights with selfies with rally buddies like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker or the actress Kerry Washington.

And Ms. Henry shouldn’t be shy about supporting low-paying political work with a aspect hustle or two. She has teamed up not solely with nonprofits that promote reproductive rights or defend democracy, but in addition with the occasional pores and skin cream or vibrator producer.

Political tchotchkes and popular culture references — “simply little references to individuals I look as much as — fill her condominium. Her doormat reads, “On this home, we perceive that fundamental human rights usually are not political points and that science is a matter of truth not opinion. Welcome.”

Taylor Swift merch is scattered round, and signed copies of books by Jimmy Carter and Gloria Steinem lie on the espresso desk. Subsequent to her door is a tote bag that reads: “Pals Don’t Let Pals Miss Elections.”

She is attempting to make amends for her actual life after the blur of the previous few months — answering emails, paying a dashing ticket and, maybe most necessary, snagging tickets to the upcoming Taylor Swift live performance. (She and Mr. Fetterman’s spouse, Giselle, have “textual content bonded” over Taylor Swift, she mentioned.) She is single and jobless, however like a lot of her ‌friends, not panicked.

“I don’t understand how that is going to play out, and I don’t essentially need to know,” she mentioned. “I don’t assume I’ll have this, like, one huge dream job endlessly.” She mentioned she doesn’t assume she needs to work on the Hill, although a current Instagram publish options her wanting very Jackie O, mysteriously visiting the White Home.

And he or she is having fun with that first style of superstar. She mentioned that she had just lately been strolling down the road and a person rolled down his window and yelled, “Are you Annie?” “I mentioned ‘Sure,’ however kinda stunned/confused,” she texted to me. Then he shouted, “Thanks for all you probably did,” and sped off.