When Kamala Harris chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised him as a representative of the “heartland of American Democrats” and a person from the Midwest who would appeal to working-class families and rural Americans.
In other words, an ideal match for Oakland-born, Berkeley-raised Harris, the daughter of Nineteen Sixties civil rights activists in Berkeley.
Ninety days before the presidential election, Harris and Walz appeared at their first joint rally at Temple University in Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon. The hall was filled with about 10,000 people, a stark contrast to a joint rally with Biden and Harris in Philadelphia in late May, once they filled a 3rd of a faculty gym.
Before the deafening crowd, Walz spoke about Harris' profession as a prosecutor and attorney general in California and the way she “fought on the side of the American people.” He then talked about his own childhood within the Midwest and the way he spent summers working on the family farm in Nebraska.
“The same values I learned on the family farm and tried to instill in my students, I took to Congress and to the nation's capital, and now Vice President Harris and I are running to bring them to the White House,” he said.
He also attacked Trump.
“Donald Trump – he sees the world differently,” Walz said. “He doesn't know anything about service – because he's too busy serving himself.”
The Republican Party began attacking Walz almost immediately: Walz was a “wannabe West Coast man,” said an announcement from the Trump campaign team, who was “obsessed with spreading California's dangerously liberal agenda far and wide.”
Trump’s vice presidential candidate JD Vance quickly portrayed Walz as a “San Francisco liberal.”
As either side struggled Tuesday to define Minnesota's largely unknown governor in an increasingly tense presidential race, California and the Bay Area have once more develop into the bogeymen of presidential election politics and supposed examples of progressivism gone uncontrolled.
“Republicans obviously recognize that California has a bad image with voters in the Midwest,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “So they're trying everything they can to associate someone with that image, as if Kamala Harris had chosen (Governor) Gavin Newsom as her running mate.”
(Newsom, for his part, sent out a press release on Tuesday calling Walz a “brilliant choice” and asking for donations to his campaign.)
Of the finalists Harris considered for the vice presidency – including Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and U.S. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona – Walz is taken into account probably the most liberal. He supported a free lunch program for all students in Minnesota, was an early advocate of gay rights and pushed for stricter gun control.
Harris' decision was a risk, said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communication at UC Berkeley and USC.
“When you have a more progressive candidate, you generally want to balance the slate with a more centrist candidate,” Schnur said. “Harris has benefited from this tremendous enthusiasm and excitement from the Democratic base over the last few weeks. They may be calculating that this is their best chance to maintain that enthusiasm.”
California became a rival to Donald Trump in 2015, when he was running for president for the primary time and an illegal immigrant killed a young woman in San Francisco with a stolen gun. Trump attacked San Francisco's “sanctuary city” policy, and the town and Pelosi have been popular targets for Republicans ever since. Some imagine that Pelosi, who still represents San Francisco in Congress and recently published “The Art of Power,” can have used her legendary influence on Harris' selection.
“Pelosi has clearly been a driving force behind this,” said David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State. “She is clearly the vice president's political godmother, and in a positive, mature way, because she gives her the space to make her own decisions.”
Although Trump characterizes Walz as someone who spent his time in office “remaking Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Walz brings personal strengths that appeal more to moderate voters – those the Harris-Walz campaign will bring to swing states within the three months leading as much as the Nov. 5 election.
Walz is the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer ever to serve within the U.S. House of Representatives. He is an avid hunter and fisherman, a former history teacher and football coach. And at 60, he’s a middle-aged white man.
Democratic U.S. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who ran against Biden within the primaries, put it this fashion: “Tim Walz can fix a lawnmower, fire a cannon and vehemently defend women's freedom. And he does it all in one day.”
She spent the entire morning the memes her friends sent her.
“There's a lot of laughter. There are a lot of jokes. There's silliness. There are all these images, like Walz holding a piglet and laughing his head off, or posting a picture of his cat upset that she didn't get tickets to see Taylor Swift,” said Schlax, 43. “It just evokes this feeling of joy and hope.”
But will that matter on Election Day in November? Vice presidential candidates rarely make much of a difference, although they will lose voters in the event that they make mistakes. Some say Vance did it by disparaging women without children who love cats.
“Kamala Harris has actually made a safe choice that she hopes will solidify her support in Minnesota and expand to places like Michigan and Wisconsin,” said Kousser of UC San Diego. “And if she can do that and stays out of trouble, that will be a successful vice presidential pick.”
Originally published:
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