Kamala Harris keeps traveling to unconventional places. Here’s why.

Last year, on the phone for 30 minutes, the two discussed how the administration could play a role in increasing investments in underserved communities. He told her to come to the Mississippi Delta if she wanted to see what was going on.

She arrived months later.

The VP's office has an under noticed strategy in which she focuses on the ways in which administration policy is intersecting with overlooked communities. She went to Sunset, Louisiana, a rural town of fewer than 3,000 people, tout the administration's work expanding rural broadband. She has approached some of the White House's big-ticket items in ways that manifest itself.

After the bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed into law, Harris convened a briefing with administration officials to go over the part of the bill related to charging stations for electric vehicles, an interest that had animated her dating back to her time in California politics. She asked staff questions as they went from page to page of the document. How many charging stations would be built? Who would build them? What would it mean for the overlooked communities?

She said to talk to her about a community that has been left behind. Where are they going? How are they going to get there?Mitch Landrieu, senior adviser to the president, told POLITICO.

She talked about EV stations and the administration's plan to make sure its charging network made it, but not in a locality at the forefront of electoral politics.

“It’s not necessarily that we’re going to win Mississippi or Louisiana, but it makes a difference in people knowing that they’re seen and they’re heard.”

The electoral benefits of going to remote communities in non-swing states seem limited for those in the Beltway, especially at a time when the White House is trying to turn around its polling nosedive and gain praise for the state of the jobs market. The administration believes that the symbolism of a vice presidential trip matters, and that it has a clear downstream upside.

It makes a difference in people knowing that they are seen and heard.

The VP's ceremonial offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building were where the Harris strategy played out most of last year. She has pushed her team to hit the road more as Covid restrictions have been loosened.

Harris is the Domestic Policy Adviser and one of her longest-serving aides.

Harris is known to come back from trips with stories or ideas that she believes could influence the White House policy. Landrieu said that his staff has been fed material from the Harris team and that it takes them a while to get to the Cabinet secretaries meetings.

The trips give Harris an added benefit as she finds her footing in the second year of her vice presidency. Despite being Biden's No. 2, she remains a bit of an unknown to voters around the country. She polls in the 40s and 30s and there is chatter among Democrats that she isn't well positioned to succeed the president should he decide not to run again in four years.

The administration is getting their sea legs now that they are able to see voters and sell their accomplishments. She is reaching out more. She is getting out more. Donna Brazile, an ally of the White House who is part of a loose and unofficial network of Harris aides, said that she has redoubled efforts to make sure that she is there.

Harris approach could help her turn the corner on how she is perceived in the press and across the country.

If you are helping other people in the administration, not competing with them, you are putting yourself in a good position.

Harris' media strategy has also expanded. She has sat down with a number of national outlets over the last six months, and her team has also increased the number of interviews with local press and journalists who don't typically get a sit down with any vice president. The goal is to continue to find ways to talk to overlooked folks and to ignore what they perceive as some of the focus on process reporting in the D.C. press.

In D.C., the inclination is not to focus on these things. It is far from the Beltway, according to Harris senior adviser for communications. A lot of that may not be noticed by the Beltway press.