Harris sees in Walz a strategy to reach small-town America

In selecting Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris has picked a partner who is many things she is not: a product of small-town America. A union member known to campaign in a T-shirt and camo hat. A white guy who exudes Midwestern dad energy.

And, perhaps most important, a politician who has had to rely on the support of independent, or even Republican, voters to win elections.

Their pairing is somewhat predictable; a cardinal rule of vice presidential selection is to construct the ticket with political balance in mind. But it is also a statement about what many Democrats believe is one of Harris’ key vulnerabilities: that she is perceived as too liberal, putting even the small slice of rural, working-class and moderate voters that she needs across Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan out of her reach.

Harris, a California Democrat, has never won an election as a solo candidate outside the liberal bastion of California, where races often hinge not on winning swing voters but on successfully navigating intraparty fights. That has left her with limited experience acquiring a political skill Walz has honed over his nearly two decades in politics: talking to conservatives.

The great dream of Harris’ pick is that Walz’s brand of affable cultural politics can help broaden her appeal and win back some of the voters who have been fleeing the party for years.

In other words, Democrats hope that “Brat summer,” the lime green, pop-culture meme for Harris’ campaign, can translate into the kind of brat summer that evokes a staple of Midwest barbecues.

“This is a man who is as comfortable walking into Farm Fest in southern Minnesota and talking to corn and soybean growers as he is walking into a Black church in north Minneapolis,” said Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn. “He is a person who just knows how to sit down and listen and connect with people.”

But Republicans are not going to let Walz’s casual style and folksy, flat Midwestern vowels alone pass for moderate views. “This isn’t the Democratic Party of your parents or grandparents,” said Matt Brooks, chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition. And Republicans pulled out pieces of Walz’s liberal record in Minnesota – such as tampons in school bathrooms and voting rights for felons – to try to underscore the point.

The Democratic strategy is based far more on the identity politics of race, gender and cultural affiliation than on any policy calculations. Walz does not bring the clear electoral benefits of other contenders – like Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, or Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona – who might have more directly helped Harris in key swing states.

And he shares much of Harris’ liberal agenda, championing issues like protecting abortion rights, restricting guns and expanding benefits like paid family leave.

But Walz, 60, presents as a cultural moderate: He is a gun owner who hunts turkeys and pheasants, and an Army veteran from rural northwest Nebraska. His first visit to San Francisco occurred last week, when he traveled to the city for some political meetings. And he is the first Democratic vice presidential pick in more than a half-century who did not attend law school.

“Sometimes you see politicians who put on a Carhartt T-shirt in order to try to show rural America that they care about them,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “But Walz doesn’t have to do that. He has plenty of Carhartt in his closet and plaid and everything else.”

Large swaths of white, rural voters – the demographic group he fits most neatly into – are unlikely to break their yearslong support of former President Donald Trump because Walz is on the ticket. But Democrats hope Walz can curb some of those expected losses, expand where they can compete and reassure more moderate Democrats who may have concerns about Harris.

“We’re living in the real world here,” Smith said. “We might not win rural communities, but we win the small towns in those rural communities, and our margin of loss is smaller.”

It is all a very different brand of Democratic politics than was practiced by Harris in California – and nationally.

She won her last solo election – the fight for her Senate seat in 2016 – by defeating another Democrat. In 2019, Harris began a presidential campaign in which she spent months talking to Democrats alone, largely courting the progressive wing of the party in a crowded primary.

As a vice presidential candidate, it was her running mate, Joe. Biden, who made it his mission to make the case to the white working-class and moderates in the Midwest, while she was often dispatched to increase his support among the younger and more diverse parts of the Democratic coalition.

Walz rose to political power through the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, a state operation with a tradition of rural, populist politics that once held sway across the Midwest but has largely evaporated beyond his home state.

For a dozen years, he represented a rural, conservative district in southern Minnesota and was considered a moderate in Congress, even earning an A rating from the National Rifle Association. Other Democrats from rural areas lost their reelection races, but Walz held on to his seat, even as Trump won his district by a double-digit margin in 2016. Two years later, he retired to run for governor.

Still, it was liberal activists, commentators and donors who emerged as the strongest champions of Walz during the whirlwind vetting process.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont endorsed him for vice president, as did a series of labor unions and progressive advocacy organizations. Some of the most liberal donors pushed his bid to campaign officials and people close to Harris.

Those affiliations might help Republicans as they rush to cast Walz as “woke.” On Tuesday, they targeted his response to the protests, looting, vandalism and arson that engulfed Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. Critics say he responded too late to a request from the city’s mayor to deploy the National Guard.

“They make an interesting tag team because, of course, Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and the few who got caught, Kamala Harris helped bail them out of jail,” Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, told reporters traveling on his campaign plane Tuesday.

Vance was also chosen in part because of his working-class roots.

But Democrats believe Walz is enough of a skilled politician that he can defray such attacks and keep the focus on Trump. His ability to do that was the other major factor that played into his selection.

Walz rocketed to the top of the vice presidential list after a series of news media appearances, where he coined a plain-spoken way of describing Trump and his Republican allies as “weird.” It is a message he described as a “politics of joy” that has long been missing from the party.

“This is the emperor wearing no clothes,” he said in an interview on CNN last month. “This is about making sure you take away this perceived power he has.”

But, he quickly added, “I want to be very clear, I’m not speaking about the people at his rallies. Those are my relatives.” He went on: “These are my neighbors. These are good people.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.