"I believe that my friend Terry McAuliffe (pictured) is the leader Virginia needs at this moment," the vice president says in the video (see below), which has been or will be shown in more than 300 churches across the state leading up to Virginia's upcoming election for governor.
"A lot of us in Virginia are concerned on a couple of different levels," responds Jeff Katz, a talk radio personality for WRVA in Richmond.
For starters, the vice president of the United States is engaging in pure political endorsement in the video, which leaves Katz wondering where the video was filmed and who was behind the camera.
"If it's purely political, my understanding as I've heard from a number of folks here in Virginia, is that she would have to do it at the Democrats' National Committee Headquarters, [that] she would not be able to utilize her vice-presidential staff as part of it," the radio personality notes. "So I think those are very valid questions that absolutely positively have to be asked."
When it comes to the video being shown in churches, Katz points out that those are 501(c)(3) organizations, which, according to Internal Revenue Service's "Johnson Amendment," are not supposed to be engaged in pure political exercises.
Fox11 News reports that one of the country's best-known constitutional attorneys and a professor of law at George Washington University, Jonathan Turley, has called Harris's political pitch for her fellow Democrat an apparent "violation of federal law."
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) says as much in a press release about the video, although FFRF does not seem to take issue with Vice President Harris.
