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’s a small town,” she said. “Secret Service people stick out.”

What Phillips did not expect was to go viral. In a campaign-produced TikTok video that has since been viewed more than 18 million times, Harris walks into the restaurant, stops in her tracks and says, “What is that cake?” Her voice is filled with enthusiasm, almost longing. The video cuts to a chocolate cake with caramel frosting. They don’t usually make cakes, but pastry chef Jae Newby had whipped it up to commemorate Dottie’s (Phillips’s great-grandmother) birthday.

It’s likely Harris 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 fuel its popularity. Since the video went public, the cake has sold out every day. Requests to ship the cake come in daily. There’s merch. Patrons reserve a whole cake for dinner. Soon, Dottie’s will release a version of the chocolate-caramel cake in a jar, which can travel anywhere.

In this fiercely contested swing state, the cake has become a sweet touchstone for Harris supporters. “A woman drove three hours on her birthday, that’s what she wanted to do, to come to Dottie’s where the VP had been and have the cake,” Phillips said “Three women who live locally came in 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, really wanted to try it. Her enthusiasm created a feeling of connection familiar to food TV fans, but much less common in the world of politics.

In the final weeks of this knife’s edge presidential campaign, the sprint to the finish line has come down to swaying the small slice of undecided or infrequent voters who could tip the balance. Bakery stops have been few and far between, but that relatable passion helped introduce Harris to the American public at lightning speed. In Georgia, where the airwaves are currently blanketed in attack ads, the cake video gives voters an alternative.

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

But competently consuming a pork chop on a stick and chipping in on a fish fry doesn’t generate headlines. Some of the most famous campaign eating moments occurred when something went wrong. Like when Gerald Ford ate a tamale, husk and all, which some claim cost him the election. Or John Kerry’s fatal request, on his Philly cheesesteak, for Swiss. (He won Pennsylvania anyway, but no one remembers that part.)

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