Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spent their first full day as running mates on Wednesday rallying Democrats across the Midwest, but also got an idea of just how hotly contested the region will be when they overlapped on a Wisconsin tarmac with Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
The Democrats' trip began in Wisconsin before shifting to Michigan and was aimed at shoring up support among the younger, diverse, labor-friendly voters who were instrumental in helping President Joe Biden win the 2020 election. That coalition showed signs of fraying over the summer, particularly in Michigan, which has emerged as a focal point of Democratic divisions over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
With Biden now out of the race and Harris officially the Democratic nominee, leaders of the Arab American community and key unions say they are encouraged by the running mate choice. Walz’s addition to the ticket has soothed some tensions, signaling to some community leaders that Harris heard concerns about another leading contender for the vice presidential slot, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who they felt had gone too far in his support for Israel.
“The party is recognizing that there’s a coalition they have to rebuild,” said Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan. “Picking Walz is another sign of good faith.”
Donald Trump had put a similar emphasis on appealing to voters in Midwestern states with his choice of Vance an Ohio Republican senator, his vice presidential pick. Vance was even bracketing the Harris-Walz ticket with appearances in the same states on Wednesday.
The dueling schedules meant that while Harris was still greeting a group of Girl Scouts who came to see her at Chippewa Valley Regional Airport in Wisconsin, Vance’s campaign plane was taxiing in the distance.
Harris posed for a group picture with the girls around the same time Vance was deplaning and he began walking over to Air Force Two, trailed by his security detail.
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The vice president eventually climbed into her motorcade, and it pulled away before she could interact with Vance. The senator also never crossed the motorcade vehicles lined up near Harris' plane to get close to Air Force Two or Harris.
Still, that the pair came so close to doing so on a tarmac was unusual given the carefully scripted nature of campaign schedules.
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“I just wanted to check out my future plane,” Vance later told reporters, meaning that he’d travel on Air Force Two should he and Trump be elected in November. He also criticized Harris for not taking questions from reporters, though she has ocassionally responded to shouted questions while boarding her plane for campaign stops.
Vance later told the crowd at his Eau Clare stop, “We actually just saw the vice president's plane" and then joked of reporters traveling with him, “I figured they must be lonely because Kamala Harris doesn’t take any questions."
“If those people want to call me weird I call it a badge of honor,” Vance said, responding to a moniker Walz used to describe him that made the Minnesota governor notable online in the days before Harris tapped him as her running mate.
At his early stop in Michigan, Vance appeared to blame Harris for illegal immigration that he says is leading to more crime. It was an attempt to hit Harris on an issue that motivates Republican-leaning voters as well as a pushback against Walz, who in his Tuesday speech in Philadelphia stressed that violent crime had been higher during Trump's presidency.
“We’ve got to throw Kamala Harris out of office, not give her a promotion,” Vance said, arguing that the former prosecutor was not on the side of police.
Republicans are trying to portray Harris and Walz as too liberal for the Midwest, with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., saying on a conference call that Walz is “part of the radical, crazy left as is Vice President Harris.”
But Democratic enthusiasm has surged since Harris announced her candidacy and picked Walz as her running mate. The Harris campaign said Wednesday that it had raised $36 million in the first 24 hours after the vice presidential announcement.
