WASHINGTON (TND) — Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walzas her running mate to take on former President Donald Trump in the November election.
Harris is heading off on a blitz of events in swing states trying to capitalize on the early momentum of her campaign.
Walz, a two-term governor with a military and public school teaching background, has been chosen to be Harris’ No. 2.
Walz has exploded onto the national political scene in the weeks since Harris became the likely nominee, advocating on her behalf in interviews and has also received praise for turning a one-seat majority in the state’s senate into a springboard for progressive policies.
His addition to the ticket may help Harris shore up the Midwestern “Blue Wall” states that are vital to Democratic candidates’ path to an Electoral College victory.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman called Walz a “radical leftist” and a “West Coast wannabe” in reaction to Harris’ decision Tuesday morning.
"It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Trump Campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “While Walz pretends to support Americans in the Heartland, when the cameras are off, he believes that rural America is ‘mostly cows and rocks’. From proposing his own carbon-free agenda, to suggesting stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide.”
Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, claimed that Harris caved to the progressive wing of the party that had objections to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's stances on Israel.
"It just highlights how radical Kamala Harris is," he said. "This is a person who listened to the Hamas wing of her own party in selecting a nominee."
Harris said in a social media post announcing her decisionthat Walz is a committed family man with strong middle class, Midwestern roots.
“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle class families run deep,” Harris said in a social media post. “It’s personal.”
Harris noted that Walz grew up in a small town in Nebraska, spent summers working on a family farm, lost his father to cancer at a young age and, enlisted at 17 years old in the National Guard.
Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard and used his GI Bill benefits to go to college and become a teacher.
“I share this background both because it’s impressive in its own right, and because you see in no uncertain terms how it informs his record,” Harris said. “He worked with Republicans to pass infrastructure investments. He cut taxes for working families. He passed a law to provide paid family and medical leave to Minnesotan families.”
Harris and her new running mate will start a seven-state battleground tour that begins in Philadelphia on Tuesday and winds through Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada this week. Another stop in Georgia was canceled due to the effects of Hurricane Debby. Her early events have drawn large crowds and helped spur a record sum of campaign donations as she builds up her war chest to take on Trump.
The announcement of her VP pick comes after she became the official Democratic presidential nominee on Monday as a virtual roll call of the party’s delegates wrapped up. The virtual call was planned ahead of Biden’s sudden exit from the race to ensure the president would appear on the ballot in every state. She was forced into making a quick decision on a running mate with just a few months left until Election Day and spent the weekend prior meeting with six finalists — Walz, Shapiro, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The nomination process became a little more complicated when Biden decided he would end his reelection bid amid mounting pressure from his party to step down after a disastrous debate performance in June enflamed concerns about his age and mental abilities and torpedoed his position against Trump and his candidacy.
Harris received Biden’s endorsement shortly after he announced his decision to drop out, and quickly had the party coalesce around her in the hours afterward. She had received pledges from enough delegates to secure the nomination during the second day of her candidacy as more party leaders rolled out endorsements and no challengers emerged.
Her introduction to the race against Trump has flipped the race for the White House on its head again after a whirlwind month of shocking events that recalibrated the election several times over. Biden’s poor debate performance inspired panic from Democratic voters and leaders and brought on an instant bump for Trump in polling in a race that had been mostly static for months.
A few weeks later, the race got another shock when a 20-year-old opened fire at Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. The attempt on his life was the most serious assassination effort since former President Ronald Reagan was shot in. Trump formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention the following week in a four-day event that displayed party unity and enthusiasm for Trump and Vance.
Then Biden made his surprise decision to drop out of the race entirely on a Sunday afternoon in an announcement that launched Harris into leading a presidential ticket with 100-plus days left in the race. She saw an immediate bump in public opinion surveys nationally and in swing states, where she has recently overtaken Trump in some places and closed ground on his lead in others.
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