About a week before Vice President Kamala Harris visited Dottie’s Market in Savannah, Georgia, co-owner Ericka Phillips suspected something might be in the works. “Savannah is a small town,” he said. “Secret Service people stand out.”

What Phillips didn’t expect was to go viral. In a TikTok video produced by the campaign which has since been viewed more than 18 million times, Harris walks into the restaurant, stops in his tracks and says, “What’s that pie?” His voice is full of enthusiasm, almost longing. The video shows a chocolate cake with caramel frosting. They don’t normally make cakes, but pastry chef Jae Newby had made them to commemorate Dottie’s (Phillips’ great-grandmother) birthday.

Harris likely didn’t know the cake was made in Dottie’s honor, but the tribute to the restaurant’s namesake, who died in 2013, only helped boost its popularity. Since the video became public, the cake has been sold out every day. Requests to ship the cake come in daily. there is merchandise. Customers reserve an entire pie for dinner. Soon, Dottie’s will launch a version of the chocolate-caramel cake in a jar, which can travel anywhere.

In this fiercely contested swing state, the pie has become a sweet touchstone for Harris supporters. “A woman drove three hours on her birthday, that’s what she wanted to do, go to Dottie’s where the vice president had been and eat the cake,” Phillips said. “Three women who live locally came that day for the same reason, and they all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her.”

The appeal of the cake (beyond that, it looked delicious) was that the vice president really wanted to try it. Their enthusiasm created a feeling of connection familiar to fans of food television, but much less common in the world of politics.

In the final weeks of this knife-edge presidential campaign, the race to the finish line has come down to influencing the small portion of undecided or infrequent voters who could tip the balance. Bakery stops have been few and far between, but that identifiable passion helped introduce Harris to the American public at lightning speed. In Georgia, where the airwaves are currently blanketed with offensive ads, the cake video offers voters an alternative.

For politicians, eating is always part of the likability test, but Harris is the first presidential candidate to use it as a strength. Running for the US presidency has long involved Eat mountains of American food. in the electoral campaign.

But competently consuming a pork chop on a stick and nibbling on fried fish doesn’t generate headlines. Some of the most famous campaign food moments occurred when something went wrong. Like when Gerald Ford ate a tamale, shell and allthat some claim it cost him the election. Or John Kerry’s fatal request, in your philadelphia cheesesteakfor the Swiss. (He won Pennsylvania anyway, but no one remembers that part.)

For presidential candidates, food was believed to be a real inconvenience. In 1964, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine became the first woman to seek the nomination of a major political party. The Republican was known for sharing recipes with ingredients from her state, but at least at one campaign stop she refuted her characterization as the Candidate for “blueberry muffin”saying journalists should focus on their loyal service in Congress. During Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the most indelible gastronomic image was that of the candidate looking longingly at a piece of cheesecake She didn’t dare to eat.