Kareem Rahma wasn’t surprised when Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign reached out about getting Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, on his TikTok show.

Flattered, yes, but not surprised.

“As the entire world’s attention has shifted to video content, particularly short-form vertical entertainment, it would make a lot of sense for those campaigns to want to reach as many people as possible,” he said. “It’s also a lot cheaper than TV.”

Mr. Rahma, 38, is the host of “Subway Takes,” a minute-long talk show conducted on the New York City subway. Clutching a MetroCard attached to a tiny microphone, Mr. Rahma invites guests to share a strongly held (but usually pretty low-stakes) opinion. Past guests have included the actor Olivia Wilde and the musician Charli XCX.

“So what’s your take?” Mr. Rahma asks at the beginning of each episode.

For Mr. Walz this week, the take was about gutters.

“When I see a well-tended gutter, it says a lot about somebody,” Mr. Walz said in the interview, describing the various pitfalls of poorly managed gutters. He warned against ice dams in the winter, flooded basements and falls off ladders trying to clean out leaves. He recommended something called a “gutter helmet.”

TikTok’s hyper-personalized algorithm means that users who don’t regularly watch political content might never see a political video on their feed. (They also may be skeptical of the TikTok videos crafted by the campaigns themselves, which tend to be more polished and professional.) Speaking with creators like Mr. Rahma, whose content isn’t overtly political, is a tactical workaround for campaigns to get their candidates in front of a critical group of young voters. It can be a way to humanize a candidate, as well as a way of spreading the campaign’s message that is far more subtle than a stump speech.