Greetings from Los Angeles. I hope you find some time to truly relax and unwind during this final summer weekend, because we’re heading into a very busy fall. Speaking of which, I’ll be back in New York next month for a Puck retreat, source meetings, and the final days of the U.S. Open. If you’re in town and we’re due, please reach out.

In tonight’s email, news and notes on America’s other great political campaign: the race to succeed Bob Iger as C.E.O. of The Walt Disney Company. While dark horse Jimmy Pitaro is busy unveiling ESPN’s A.I.-powered multiplatform future, the allies of the presumptive frontrunners Dana Walden and Josh D’Amaro are very busy shadow campaigning in the press.

But first…

🎤 The Kamala conundrum: Kamala Harris’s first interview as the Democratic nominee, which was watched by 6.3 million people on CNN, was predictably unremarkable. In a 27-minute sit down with Dana Bash, accompanied by her running mate Tim Walz, Harris mostly evidenced the same thoughtful but cautious demeanor she has shown in past interviews—enough to exit the night unscathed without actually saying much.

What I found notable from a media perspective is just how little she was pushed. Dana conducted a responsible interview and hit on all the relevant topics—fracking, flip-flopping, the economy, the Biden of it all—and as the Times notes, it was never going to be easy to extract much news here. Still, it was a reminder of just how stale this genre has become, how rarely we see truly hard-hitting exchanges on broadcast and cable news anymore. In the last decade, only a handful of exchanges stand out—Jonathan Swan with Trump, for instance, but even that was conducted by a digital journalist on HBO. In any event, there must be room for innovation here, right? One cable news veteran likened the “clunky” interview to “a gas guzzler in the age of electric cars.”

🗣️ What’s eating Megyn Kelly?: While I’m loath to reward such a blatant and desperate plea for attention, Megyn Kelly’s recent broadside against Kaitlan Collins has certainly caught the attention of New York media’s chattering classes. In case you missed it, the former Fox News star cum misplaced/overpriced NBC host cum SiriusXM provocateur called Kaitlan “extremely boring” and a “cold-hearted bitch,” and advised her to “smile” more. Kaitlan and CNN admirably ignored the crude and infantile slight, though The View’s Ana Navarro came to Kaitlan’s defense, noting that Megyn’s NBC show had been a “dismal failure.” This is pure Page Six catnip, but that’s exactly the point. Without her former platforms, Megyn only seems capable of achieving relevance through needless provocation. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, Kaitlan is the one who still has a cable news primetime show.

🗞️ The Journal’s good Fortune: Former Fortune C.E.O. Alan Murray is joining The Wall Street Journal as the editorial lead for its events arm, part of a broader plan to grow WSJ Live into a much bigger business. This is inarguably a step down for Alan, who will now report to Dow Jones C.E.O. Almar Latour, but it’s a net win for the Journal as it seeks to improve what has so far been an underpowered business. In any event, it will be interesting to see how they leverage Emma Tucker’s newsroom and how they compete in this space with Bloomberg, FT, CNBC, Semafor, and so on.

Pitaro, of course, is one of four Disney executives officially under consideration for the role—alongside Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, and parks tsar Josh D’Amaro. In reality, though, Bergman is considered a drive-by. And Pitaro, who is campaigning for the job from Bristol rather than Burbank, is also considered an outsider in what is generally believed to be a two-car race between D’Amaro and Walden. Regardless, the nearly decade-long obsession with Iger succession being what it is, this reporter wanted a window into Pitaro’s thinking.

The search “has not changed anything,” Pitaro gamely replied. “I’m sitting in my dream job. I literally grew up wanting to work here. … I’m very fortunate and blessed to be surrounded by the best executives in the industry. I get out of bed and I say to myself, ‘I have to earn this today,’ because I feel just fortunate to be here.” It was the smart and prudent thing to say and, as those who know Jimmy will attest, undoubtedly genuine. Moreover, as the dark horse candidate, it was probably easy enough to give an honest and not terribly overwrought answer.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published the first thorough profile of D’Amaro, a 26-year Disney veteran who has been almost entirely invisible to general audiences until now. (One perk of running the parks division, rather than entertainment or sports, is that you exist outside the purview of a bored and gossipy trade press. There is no Penske Media for the global attractions trade.) The piece was overwhelmingly positive: D’Amaro was “charismatic and affable,” “widely praised by fans and investors,” and credited with the business innovations that transformed the parks unit “from a drag on Disney during the pandemic to its main profit engine.”

Upon closer inspection, the profile was mostly remarkable for how blatantly it seemed to be auditioning D’Amaro for the role. He is practically cast as the modern-day second coming of Walt Disney, himself: a small-town boy who married his high-school sweetheart, a casual animator “known to doodle anime-like characters on notepads during meetings,” a beloved leader who “inspires loyalty in his subordinates and is a celebrity of sorts among fans.” (Walt married his wife, a young animator, when he was 24.) D’Amaro is also credited with conceiving and implementing three innovations that restored the company’s financial health after the pandemic. One such was tiered ticketing that increased prices—but, the Journal stresses, the Disney faithful adore him anyway!

It’s not hard to see the strategy at play here. D’Amaro and his acolytes are trying to position him not only as a natural successor to Iger—he meets with him every day and even dresses like him now, unnervingly—but also a far remove from former parks chair-turned-C.E.O. Bob Chapek, who lacked the charisma, creative experience, and interpersonal finesse to successfully run the larger business. The Journal notes that, in addition to those anime doodles, D’Amaro has 154,000 Instagram followers, likes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and is a Celtics fan. (Bob likes basketball, too!) The piece practically shouts D’Amaro is a warm human with business savvy and a creative streak!

To some Disney veterans, the piece and its emphasis on creative qualifications called to mind Tom Staggs’s audition for Iger’s chair nearly a decade earlier. Staggs had served as both chief financial officer and parks chairman, but a 2015 Times profile noted that his “understanding” of Disney went “well beyond [his] training as a financial steward,” mentioning his “creative input” on a new Avatar ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida. John Lasseter, then the chief creative officer of Pixar, was cited as a close friend and loyal champion, and the piece suggested that their “warm connection” would prove critical to Disney’s future—blah, blah, blah. And oh by the way, Staggs played trumpet in high school and had become quite the passionate home cook. Truly, the Iger Succession Audition Profile is a genre unto itself.

Of course, it wasn’t so long ago that Walden’s acolytes were testing a similar rollout via CNBC, in a piece artlessly titled, “How Dana Walden Could Defy Critics and Become Disney’s First Female C.E.O.” But Walden’s challenge is precisely the opposite of D’Amaro’s: She has the creative bona fides and the Hollywood relationships and also worked hand in glove with Iger, but she needs to convince Wall Street that she can manage the strategy and operations of a $164 billion multinational company. Perhaps this is why her team went with CNBC.

In the piece, her allies dismissed the criticism as sexist, noted that she had run the business at Fox and then Disney Entertainment for a long time, met with many institutional investors throughout her tenure in Burbank, and stressed that Iger, himself, had once been labeled an empty suit with little experience outside of film and television. (Nevertheless, Iger had served for five years as chief operating officer under Michael Eisner). A procession of Walden’s own “warm connections”—Peter Chernin, Jen Salke, Jay Sures—issued robust and fairly convincing testimonials, one of the many things close friends are good for in this business.

There is an additional wrinkle here, which the aforementioned Staggs knows well: Iger works in mysterious ways and keeps his cards close to the chest. So close, in fact, that many of the would-be heirs whom he’s passed over in the last decade didn’t even know they were being passed over until someone else got a formal promotion.

Of course, that points to the risks for Disney itself in this whole tiresome and convoluted dance. When Staggs was promoted to heir apparent, his rival in the succession war, C.F.O. Jay Rasulo, quit. When Staggs learned he wasn’t getting the top job, he left (a defenestration of sorts, I guess). And when Kevin Mayer lost out to Chapek, he bolted. In the latter two cases, their absence was ultimately felt so deeply at Burbank that Iger convinced Mayer and Staggs, now business partners at Candle Media, to come back as advisors. (Meanwhile, Rasulo teamed up with Iger antagonist Nelson Peltz in his latest proxy war against Disney).

About halfway into the Journal’s D’Amaro profile, certain unnamed supporters “say they worry that if [D’Amaro] is passed over, he might be recruited to leave Disney and run a different company.” Indeed, D’Amaro could leave tomorrow and run almost any major hospitality company. Walden could sign with a pure play entertainment company unencumbered by the dying linear business. Even Pitaro could become a league manager or team president or part of an ownership group.

Most media executive P.R. plays are tacky and gross by nature, but the funny thing about the Disney job is that it requires a campaign: It’s a very public perch at an iconic American company that sits at the intersection of entertainment, sports, culture, and, increasingly, politics. And yet, the campaign, itself, can distract from how well the candidates perform in their jobs, and the duration of the campaign can sour colleagues—who are otherwise working hand in hand to lead Disney through a complex series of challenges—on one another. Pitaro offered a note-perfect response when questioned at Bristol, but the inquisition will only intensify in the future, especially given Iger’s enigmatic instincts. And while his most critical challenge is finally picking the right successor, Iger’s second priority should be ensuring that some of the other folks stick around, too.