Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her newly minted running mate, made their first public appearance together at a a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening.
“I couldn’t be prouder to be on this ticket,” Walz said to an excited crowd that numbered more than 12,000, according to the Harris campaign. “Thank you for bringing back the joy.”
“Since the day that I announced my candidacy, I set out to find a partner who can help build this brighter future,” Harris said in her own rally speech Tuesday. “I found such a leader: Governor Tim Walz of the great state of Minnesota.”
Two weeks ago, Walz was a relatively unknown Democrat on the national stage. But his sharp, plain-spoken media interviews, paired with his compelling Midwest, middle-class profile soon catapulted him onto Harris’ VP short list.
The Harris campaign officially announced Walz as her running mate Tuesday morning, solidifying the Democratic ticket with just 91 days until the election.
Walz directed sharp critiques at the Republican ticket of former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, some of which drew laughs from the audience.
“Make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump,” Walz said, “and that’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”
The Minnesota governor also worked to draw a sharp contrast between himself and Vance, who has built much of his political biography on representing Midwestern values.
“Like all the 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.
Harris used her speech to draw attention to several elements of Walz’s biography: his time serving in the Army National Guard; his decades-long career as a high school teacher and football coach, and his time advising the school’s gay-straight alliance.
Harris also debuted some new lines in her evolving stump speech, which sounded tailor made to appeal to moderates and political independents.
“My promise to you is this: Our campaign will reach out to everyone, from red states to blue states, from the heartland to the coast, in rural, urban, suburban and tribal communities,” Harris said, underscoring the campaign’s strategy to use Walz to expand the Democratic coalition.
“We are running a campaign on behalf of all Americans,” she said.
In the hours since Walz was announced as her running mate, the campaign has released new Harris-Walz merchandise, as well as several advertisements introducing Walz and social media statements.
The campaign said it raised $20 million in donations after Walz was announced, a drop in the bucket relative to the $310 million the campaign hauled in July alone.
Over the past two weeks, Walz went through an accelerated VP vetting process, along side fellow contenders like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Shapiro, reportedly the second-strongest contender, joined the Harris-Walz rally in his home state Tuesday evening and gave a roaring speech supporting the ticket, despite ultimately being passed up for the VP job.
“I’m gonna be working my tail off to make sure we make Kamala Harris and Tim Walz the next leaders of the United States of America,” Shapiro told the crowd. “Tim Walz is a great patriot. I’ll tell you what else: Tim Walz is a dear friend.”
Harris’ running mate decision punctuated a weeks-long frenzy to pivot the Democratic ticket after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race following his dismal June debate performance against Trump.
“I launched my campaign for the President of the United States a mere two weeks ago, and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind,” Harris said at the Philadelphia rally, acknowledging the turbocharged timeline on which her campaign has been operating. “Now we got some work to do. We need to move to the general election, and win that.”
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