If you thought Kamala Harris’s ascension to presidential nominee was rapid, take a look at her running mate.
A couple of weeks ago, most Americans could not have named the governor of Minnesota.
Tim Walz’s odds of becoming Harris’s vice-presidential pick only really narrowed in the closing days of the fortnight in which she carried out her warp-speed search for a deputy.
Conventional wisdom suggested the vice-president needed a white guy to balance the ticket in terms of gender and race.
And if there really was a “Midwest white guy emporium”, as The Daily Show joked, then Walz would certainly be found there.
You might even put him in the window display.
On the surface, he’s unremarkable.
Initially, it seemed as though another candidate, Arizona senator Mark Kelly, offered a much more compelling backstory.
Kelly is a former combat naval pilot and a former astronaut, and he is married to a high-profile victim of gun violence.
He is relatively tough on the border issue, a thorn in the side of Democrats, and could have helped try to secure the swing state of Arizona.
But amongst the plethora of white, male candidates, one was rising above the rest. And when you looked a little closer, his story was so quintessentially small-town America, it felt almost made up.
The backstory
Walz grew up in rural Nebraska, worked summers on the family farm, joined the Army National Guard to see his way through college, became a high school teacher and coached football.
Along the way, he met the woman he’s been married to for almost three decades, also a school teacher, and had a couple of kids — more on them later.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz appeared together in Philadelphia hours after she announced her decision.(Reuters: Elizabeth Frantz)
He managed to do all that before entering politics, first as a member of Congress in 2007 after winning a traditionally Republican seat.
“I was running in a district that had one Democrat since 1892,” the 60-year-old told a rally in Philadelphia this week as he kicked off a swing state tour with Harris.
“My neighbours graced me with an opportunity to represent them in the United States House of Representatives.”
Walz’s neighbours also entered the narrative when he raised the issue of IVF. Ever since a conservative court in Alabama (briefly) blocked access to IVF in that state, Democrats have suggested it could become the next battleground in the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade.
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbours and their personal choices that they make,” Walz told the rally.
“Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: mind your own damn business.”
That part of the speech was related to how Walz and his wife turned to IVF to have their children.
That their daughter was named Hope when she finally arrived “wasn’t by chance”, he said.
Hope, now all grown up, makes an appearance in a resurfaced video Walz posted last year from the Minnesota State Fair.
The pair are trying out “something old” and “something new” at the fair, a “tradition” that seems to be pushed more by father than daughter, who rolls her eyes at his jokes.
It’s a little goofy and awkward, cementing Walz’s credentials as a Midwestern Dad.
Viral taunts
Walz catapulted himself to the top of a strong list of possible Democratic VP picks partly with his description of the Republican opposition as “weird”.
“These are weird people on the other side,” he told MSNBC.
The phrase took off and was soon being parroted by senior Democrats, including Harris.
The Minnesota governor has plenty more lines of attack to try out on Trump and his running mate, author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance.
“Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community,” Walz quipped at the Philadelphia rally.
He wasn’t finished with the jokes there, making reference to a viral false narrative about Vance and a sexual encounter with a couch.
“I gotta tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,” Walz joked.
“See what I did there,” he added, as the audience of party diehards erupted in laughter.
Bringing the fire
Some of those attending the rally in Philadelphia were a little disappointed that Josh Shapiro, their governor, hadn’t been selected by Harris.
Shapiro was reported to have made it to the final two but was ultimately beaten by Walz.
Josh Shapiro appeared on a Pennsylvania stage to support the man who beat him in the VP race.(Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)
The successful candidate used folksy, plain-talking charm to show the audience he understood what they might be feeling.
“Holy hell, can this guy bring the fire,” Walz said of the home-state governor, who had earlier put aside any disappointment to give a rousing introduction to the new Harris-Walz ticket.
Walz and Harris need Shapiro to bring that fire to try to help bring Pennsylvania in November’s election.
It’s considered a must-win state.
Walz’s superpower, Harris is hoping, is that he might also bring rural voters in other key swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan — people who may have drifted away from the Democrats in the past two election cycles, or might be thinking about it.
They’re exactly the kind of voters Trump is hoping Vance, with his history of growing up poor in Ohio, could appeal to.
Now the hillbilly goes up against the daggy Dad.
Taking pot shots
If the two veep candidates ever debate, it might not be their golfing handicaps they argue about, as Trump and Joe Biden did in that fateful encounter, but their shooting skills.
Walz is an advocate for greater gun control, but a proud owner and avid hunter.
“I guarantee you he can’t shoot pheasants like I can,” he recently said of Vance.
The Minnesota governor is a conservative-looking progressive who’s championed gay rights, reproductive rights, voting rights and free school meals.
The Trump camp was quick out of the blocks with its attacks after he was confirmed as Harris’s running mate.
Tim Walz was selected from a shortlist of white, male contenders.(Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)
On social media, Trump lambasted Walz and Harris as a “radical left duo”.
“There has never been anything like it,” he wrote.
And Vance, in Pennsylvania for his own swing state tour, told reporters: “My view on it is it just highlights how radical Kamala Harris is.”
Two classic American stories
Vance said he’d called Walz to congratulate him on the nomination.
That’s probably where the cordiality begins and ends so soon before America votes.
Walz and Vance are now battling it out for America’s heartland.
Each has a classic American story to tell of rising up from humble roots, and a legitimate claim to understand ordinary folks who might feel left behind.
Each will paint the other as dangerous and elitist.
Two very different men will be tested in middle America.
“So we got 91 days,” Walz said on the day he was chosen. “My God, that’s easy.”
That’s three months to keep trying to land those jokes and attack lines.
“We’ll sleep when we’re dead!”
“Do no harm” is normally the mantra in choosing a running mate.
In this unusual cycle, Harris and Trump may be hoping for something more from their picks.
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Publish date : 2024-08-07 08:15:00
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