(FILES) Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (L) greets US Vice President Kamala Harris as she arrives on the Minneapolis-St. Paul Worldwide Airport in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on March 14, 2024. Harris picked Walz as her working mate on August 6, 2024, US media reported, because the vp prepares to tackle Republican Donald Trump in November’s US election. (Picture by STEPHEN MATUREN / AFP)
WASHINGTON, United States — Kamala Harris mentioned Tuesday she was “proud” to faucet Tim Walz as her working mate, choosing the Minnesota governor with blue-collar credentials because the companion most probably to spice up her historic — and bruising — bid for the White Home.
Walz had been on a vice-presidential shortlist with a string of different Democratic figures seen as broadening Harris’s attraction as she sprints into the competition towards Donald Trump.
Aiming to make historical past as the primary girl president, Harris — already a trailblazer as the primary feminine and first Black and South Asian vp — has little time earlier than Election Day on November 5.
“I’m proud to announce that I’ve requested @Tim_Walz to be my working mate,” she posted on X.
“As a governor, a coach, a trainer, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working households like his. It’s nice to have him on the staff.”
Expectations had at all times been that Harris would choose a white man to stability the ticket and assist win over working-class, white, male voters, a demographic that propelled Trump to victory in 2016.
Walz suits that description as a 60-year-old Midwesterner with a folksy method, many years of navy expertise and a rural perspective — a gun-owning Democrat who tweets about searching.
The onetime trainer and college sports activities coach flipped a Republican district to win a seat within the US Home of Representatives in a state seen as gentle years from the coastal elites of California, Harris’s house turf, or the East Coast.
On the similar time, Walz will attraction to the left for championing fashionable Democratic insurance policies together with hashish legalization, growing employee protections, safeguarding abortion rights, and supporting tighter firearm restrictions.
Trump’s marketing campaign instantly branded the Minnesotan as a “dangerously liberal extremist” searching for to impose California values on the nation.
However “to characterize him as left is so unreal,” Nancy Pelosi, the previous Home speaker who labored extensively with him in Congress, advised MSNBC.
Walz “is true down the center. He’s a heartland of America Democrat.”
Walz referred to as his naming the “honor of a lifetime” and quipped it felt like “the primary day of college.”
Battleground swing
He and Harris will hit the marketing campaign path instantly, launching an intense, five-day swing by means of battleground states beginning Tuesday within the greatest prize, Pennsylvania.
Recent from securing the official Democratic nomination, Harris will head to the nationwide conference in Chicago in two weeks in complete management of her occasion.
It has been a exceptional journey for Harris, who solely entered the race final month when 81-year-old President Joe Biden withdrew, bowing to mounting considerations over his psychological acuity.
In a marketing campaign barely two weeks outdated, the 59-year-old former prosecutor and senator has obliterated fundraising data, attracted big crowds and dominated social media on her method to erasing what had been Trump’s rising lead in polls over Biden.
The most recent presidential ballot by the College of Massachusetts Amherst launched Monday has Harris main Trump nationally by three share factors — 46 to 43 — in comparison with a four-point lead for Trump over Biden in January.
Within the swing states that determine the Electoral School contest in US elections, Harris is neck and neck with Trump, who shocked the world along with his 2016 presidential victory however was crushed by Biden in 2020.
First main check
Choosing a working mate was seen as the primary huge check for Harris in her bid to grow to be the nation’s chief government.
Now, Harris and Walz will face the primary hurdle of their floor recreation as they make the nationwide swing this week from Philadelphia to Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Tropical Storm Debby has pressured the postponement of a cease in battleground Georgia, and in response to media stories additionally North Carolina.
Pennsylvania is a part of the “blue wall” that carried Biden to victory in 2020, alongside Michigan and Wisconsin. That was a important motive many anticipated Harris to as an alternative choose that state’s governor, Josh Shapiro.
Additionally on the vice presidential shortlist had been former astronaut and present US Senator Mark Kelly, of Arizona, and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.
Trump was driving excessive politically final month after surviving an assassination try at a rally, after which utilizing the Republican conference to spotlight his picture of vigor towards the bodily frail Biden.
However with Biden’s dramatic exit and Harris’s quick begin, he’s scrambling to recalibrate.
At a rally Saturday in Georgia, Trump referred to as Harris a “Marxist” who would trigger an “financial crash.”
Three days earlier, he shocked many when he advised an viewers of Black journalists that Harris had “turned Black” out of political expediency.
Your subscription couldn’t be saved. Please attempt once more.
Your subscription has been profitable.
READ: Kamala Harris says US will ‘communicate up’ on South China Sea
