Kamala Harris’s vice-president pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, joins her at Philadelphia rally
In their first campaign appearance together, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz offered a glimpse of how they might appeal to voters as a duo, while Republicans sharpened their attack lines | WATCH
US presidential hopeful Kamala Harris and her freshly selected running mate Tim Walz hit the campaign trail together on Tuesday for the first time, as the Democratic duo fired up supporters at a rally in key battleground Pennsylvania.
Mr Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor whose everyman credentials could help win over voters, joined Ms Harris in Philadelphia to launch a tour through four swing states where the race against Donald Trump is likely to be decided.
He quickly took aim at Republican White House nominee Mr Trump as being too selfish to serve Americans.
“Donald Trump — he sees the world differently. He doesn’t know the first thing about service because he’s too busy serving himself,” Mr Walz told a told of around 10,000 wildly cheering supporters in Philadelphia.
He accused Mr Trump of deliberately weakening the economy for his own ends, mocking law and order, and sowing “chaos and division”
“He drove our economy into the ground, and make no mistake: violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed,” Mr Walz added, earning roars of laughter and boisterous applause.
He spoke of his upbringing in the small town of Butte, Nebraska where he worked on the family farm and where community was a “way of life” with neighbours striving together “for the common good.”
Harris, Walz break out campaign lines
In their first campaign appearance together, Ms Harris and Mr Walz offered a glimpse of how they might appeal to voters as a duo — one a trailblazing Black and South Asian former senator from California, the other a white ex-congressman from the blue-collar US heartland.
Ms Harris, 59, described Ms Walz as “a leader who will help unite our nation and move us forward, a fighter for the middle class, a patriot who believes, as I do, in the extraordinary promise of America.”
A former attorney general of California, Ms Harris has sought to draw a contrast between her past as a prosecutor and Mr Trump’s criminal record, which extends to 34 felonies, with over a dozen more charges pending.
But she told the crowd: “This campaign — our campaign — is not just a fight against Donald Trump. Our campaign — this campaign — is a fight for the future.”
Mr Walz’s role as Ms Harris’s top cheerleader also started coming into focus as he lauded her work and career.
“She took on the predators and the fraudsters, she took down transnational gangs, stood up against powerful corporate interests,” Mr Walz said.
“And she never hesitated to reach across the aisle if it meant improving people’s lives … And she does it all with a sense of joy.”
Mr Walz’s recent viral success in distilling Democrats’ attack lines against Republicans into the one-word characterisation — “weird” — propelled him up Harris’s shortlist, and he got cheers for reprising it in Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who was part of the undercard in Philadelphia and spoke glowingly of Mr Walz, had been a favourite but Mr Walz, 60, was said to have connected more deeply with Harris during interviews.
Trump blasts ‘dangerous’ choice
Mr Trump and Republicans moved quickly to cast Ms Harris’s choice as a “dangerously liberal extremist”, zeroing in on his performance during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots which saw Minneapolis descend into chaos.
Ms Harris picked Mr Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, opting for a former schoolteacher as the partner most likely to complement her in a historic – and bruising – bid for the White House.
Mr Walz had been on a shortlist with a string of other Democratic figures seen as broadening Ms Harris’s appeal as she sprints into the contest against Mr Trump.
Aiming to make history as the first woman president, Ms Harris – already a trailblazer as the first female and first Black and South Asian Vice-President – has little time before election day on November 5.
Ms Harris said she was “proud” to choose Mr Walz as her running mate.
“As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his. It’s great to have him on the team,” Ms Harris said on X.
Expectations had always been that Ms Harris would pick a white man to balance the ticket – and the kind of Democrat who can help counter attacks from Republicans that she is too far to the left.
A tactical choice for Harris
Mr Walz fits that description as a Midwesterner with a folksy manner from a state that could be light years from the coastal elites of California, where Ms Harris comes from, or the east coast.
He will also appeal to progressives after having championed popular Democratic policies including cannabis legalisation and increasing workers’ rights.
He described his refusal-to-be-categorised political protections, paid sick leave, and expanding background checks for gun purchases persona with typically Minnesotan straightforwardness.
“I just am who I am,” he recently told reporters.
The duo will hit the campaign trail immediately, launching an intense, five-day swing through battleground states starting on Tuesday in the biggest prize, Pennsylvania.
I am proud to announce that I've asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 6, 2024
As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he's delivered for working families like his.
It's great to have him on the team.
Now let’s get to work. Join us:https://t.co/W4AE2WlMTj
As top Democrats from President Joe Biden down praised Ms Harris’s choice of Mr Walz, a national guardsman and congressman, Republicans also accused Ms Harris and Democrats of anti-Semitism for picking Mr Walz over the nationally better known governor, Mr Shapiro, who is Jewish.
Mr Trump, who has had a rough couple of weeks politically since Ms Harris emerged as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, said Mr Walz would be the “worst vice president in history … unleash hell on earth and open the borders to the worst criminals imaginable” in a campaign email fired off soon after Ms Harris’s choice emerged.
“He’ll rubber stamp Kamala’s GREEN NEW SCAM and light trillions of dollars on fire,” Mr Trump said in the email, referring to the ‘green new deal’ that Democrats often champion.
Ms Harris, who has enjoyed a honeymoon in the polls since her elevation as the party’s presidential candidate, ended days of intense speculation over whom she would choose as her running mate on Tuesday, as she headed off to Philadelphia to kick off a tour of battleground states.
Mr Walz, who was re-elected as governor in 2022 in the strongly Democrat state of Minnesota after spending over a decade in the House of Representatives, became the favourite in recent days as the field of potential Democrat vice presidential candidates narrowed to three, including Mr Shapiro and Arizona senator Mark Kelly.
“This is a guy who has proposed shipping more manufacturing jobs to China, who wants to make American people more reliant on foreign energy and has proposed defunding the police,” Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance told reporters on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).
“Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in 2020 and the few that got caught, Kamala bailed them out of jail,” he added, referring to Ms Harris previous career as a lawyer.
Reports suggested Ms Harris was drawn to Mr Walz’s personable, avuncular style, their ‘chemistry’ during the final interview process, his potential appeal in mid-western ‘must win’ states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, and some of his policy record, including a statewide child-tax credit and codification of abortion rights.
Republicans condemn ‘anti-Semitic’ pick
Some Republicans suggested it was also to avoid a fight with the far-left of the Democrat party, which has become stridently anti-Israel, by picking Mr Shapiro, the popular governor of a critical battleground state, who is Jewish and once served in the Israeli Defence Force.
“Kamala is the most anti-Israel member of Biden’s team, always siding with Hamas and Iran’s interests. Shapiro and Walz’s views on Israel aren’t that different. But Harris catered to her pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic base who opposed Shapiro because he’s Jewish,” said Republican Senator Tom Cotton in a statement.
Republicans roundly criticised Mr Walz for his allegedly slow response to the break down in law and order in his state’s biggest city, Minneapolis, in May 2020 after the death of George Floyd, which saw massive damage to property in riots that latest for a week.
“In 2021, Minnesotans were roughly five times more likely to move to Florida than vice versa. They were fleeing a state that, under Gov. Tim Walz, turned its back on law and order, increased taxes, and imposed unscientific coronavirus restrictions, harming children and destroying businesses,” said Republican governor Ron DeSantis.
Right-wing influencer Charles Kirk told his 3.2 million followers that Tim Walz had “overseen some of the most radical youth trans surgery laws in the country”.
“You helped ignite the George Floyd riots, the worst the country had seen in decades. While Minneapolis burned, you stalled on deploying the National Guard for an entire day, blaming the city for not submitting the right paperwork,” he said on X.
Fresh from securing the official Democratic nomination, Ms Harris can now head to the national convention in Chicago in two weeks in total control of her party.
With AFP
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