When Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised him as a “heartland of American Democrat” and a “down the middle” Midwesterner who will appeal to working class families and rural Americans.
In other words, a perfect balance to Oakland-born and Berkeley-raised Harris, the daughter of 1960s Berkeley civil rights activists.
Ninety days to the presidential election, Harris and Walz appeared at their first rally together Tuesday afternoon at Temple University in Philadelphia. The indoor arena was bursting with a capacity crowd of about 10,000 people, a stark contrast to a joint Philadelphia rally with Biden and Harris in late May when they filled one-third of a school gym.
In front of the deafening crowd, Walz talked about Harris’s career as a prosecutor and attorney general in California and how she “fought on the side of the American people.” Then he launched into his own Midwest upbringing, how he spent summers working on the family farm in Nebraska.
“These same values I learned on the family farm and tried to instill in my students, I took to Congress and the state capital, and now, Vice President Harris and I are running to take them to the White House,” he said.
He also took a shot at Trump.
“Donald Trump — he sees the world differently,” Walz said. “He doesn’t know the first thing about service — because he’s too busy serving himself.”
The GOP messaging against Walz started almost immediately: Walz is a “West Coast wannabe,” the Trump campaign said in a statement, who is “obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide.”
Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance quickly portrayed Walz as a “San Francisco-style liberal.”
As each side scrambled Tuesday to define the largely unknown Minnesota governor in an ever-tightening presidential race, California and the Bay Area have, once again, become the bogeyman of presidential election politics, would-be examples of progressivism run amok.
“Republicans have clearly discovered that California is a bad brand in the Midwest for Midwest voters,” said UC San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser. “So they’re trying to do everything they can to tie someone to this brand, as if Kamala Harris chose (Gov.) Gavin Newsom as her running mate.”
(Newsom, for his part, sent out a press release Tuesday, describing Walz as “a brilliant choice” and seeking donations to their campaigns.)
Among the finalists Harris considered for the vice president role — including Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona — Walz can be seen as the most liberal. He championed a free lunch program for all Minnesota students, was an early supporter of gay rights, and has championed tighter gun controls.
Harris’ choice is a risk, said Dan Schnur who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and USC.
“Generally, when you have a more progressive candidate, you want to balance the ticket with someone more centrist,” Schnur said. “Harris has benefited over the last few weeks from this tremendous, tremendous enthusiasm and excitement from the Democratic base. They may be calculating that keeping that excitement going is their best bet.”
California became a foil to Donald Trump in 2015, when he was running for president the first time and an undocumented immigrant killed a young San Francisco woman with a stolen gun. Trump assailed San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” policies. The city, as well as Pelosi, have become favorite GOP targets ever since. Some believe that Pelosi, who still represents San Francisco in Congress and recently published “The Art of Power,” may well have exerted her legendary influence over Harris’s selection.
“Pelosi clearly has been a driver of this,” said Sonoma State Political Science Professor David McCuan. “She is someone who clearly is the political godmother of the vice president in a positive way, in a mature way, because she gives her the running room to make her own decisions.”
Despite Trump’s characterization of Walz as spending his governorship “trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Walz brings personal assets that tend to appeal to more moderate voters — the ones the Harris-Walz campaign will be taking to the swing states in the three months running up to the Nov. 5 election.
Walz is the highest non-commissioned officer ever to serve in the U.S. House, he is an avid hunter and fisherman, a former history teacher and football coach. And ay 60, he’s a white middle-aged man.
As U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat who ran against Biden in the Democratic primaries, put it: “Tim Walz can fix a lawnmower, fire a cannon, and fiercely protect women’s freedoms. All in one day.”
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Lyndsey Schlax, a Democrat and history teacher from the East Bay city of Alameda, says that while she doesn’t agree with everything about Walz — or Harris for that matter — she is looking for a little levity in the presidential campaign that the ticket can bring.
She’s been watching memes her friends sent her all morning.
“There’s a lot of laughter. There’s a lot of jokes. There’s silliness. There’s all these pictures, like Walz holding a piglet and laughing his head off, or posting a picture of his cat being upset that the cat didn’t get Taylor Swift tickets,” Schlax, 43, said. “That so just taps into this kind of feeling of joy and hope.”
But will any of it matter on election day in November? Vice presidential candidates rarely move the needle much, although there’s potential to lose voters if they mess up, like some suggest Vance has by denigrating women without children who love cats.
“Really, what Kamala Harris did is a safe pick that she hopes solidifies her support in Minnesota and extends to places like Michigan and Wisconsin,” said Kousser from UC San Diego. “And if it just does that and doesn’t get her in trouble, that’ll be a successful VP pick.”
