Walz plays up his Nebraska roots at rally near Omaha

LA VISTA, Neb. – Cinnamon rolls and chili. The Yale of the Midwest. A runza.

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, back home in Nebraska on Saturday, delivered his usual appeals to joy and freedom, along with some jabs at former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. But this time, he added a flex of his Nebraska roots and his knowledge of the state’s culture.

Walz spoke of growing up in the tiny village of Butte, graduating from Chadron State College – “the Yale of the Midwest,” he said to laughs – and serving in the state’s Army National Guard, in which he enlisted at 17. He was introduced by one of his former high school students in the state and had former Butte classmates in the audience.

“We have a slogan here – Nebraska, it is not for everyone,” he told a boisterous audience at a theater in La Vista, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. “Well, it certainly ain’t for Donald Trump, I’ll tell you that much.”

The stop in his home state offered Walz another chance to reach rural, working-class and moderate voters, as he and Vice President Kamala Harris cast themselves as fighters for the middle class.

Nebraska is one of two states (along with Maine) that award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. A presidential candidate can lose the state and still earn electoral votes there.

Nebraska is solidly Republican, but its 2nd District, which encompasses Omaha and is known as Nebraska’s blue dot, is a swing region that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Joe Biden in 2020. Biden won with 56.4% of the vote.

In the spring, Nebraska Republicans, under pressure from Trump; the state’s governor, Jim Pillen; and conservative activists, renewed an effort to move to a “winner-take-all” system in presidential elections. State legislators overwhelmingly voted against the proposal.

Vance is expected at a fundraiser in Omaha this month.

“It is not just symbolic,” Pete Festersen, the president of the Omaha City Council, said of Walz’s stop in the state. “It shows they can compete through the Midwest and certainly for our electoral vote, and that can make a difference this election.”

In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, criticized Walz’s platform and record, saying that Walz and Harris had “nothing to offer the American people other than their radical, communist ideas.”

Walz was born in West Point, a rural town of roughly 3,500 people northwest of Omaha, and spent much of his younger days in Butte and Valentine, Nebraska. His mother was a community activist and his father a public school administrator, and he became a high school teacher and coach in Nebraska after a year of teaching in China. He met his wife, Gwen, also a teacher, at the Nebraska school, and the two moved to her native Minnesota in 1996.

Onstage, Walz joked that Vance would probably call a runza – a bread pocket filled with beef, cabbage or sauerkraut, and a regional specialty – “a Hot Pocket.” He said his parents and the communities he grew up in taught him to “show generosity towards your neighbor,” to “work for the common good” and that chili and cinnamon rolls – a sweet and spicy favorite in Nebraska – is a good combination.

He pledged that a Harris administration would cut taxes – and “not for the billionaires” – lower the cost for rent and prescription drugs and work to provide families relief from medical debt. He argued that it was the Harris-Walz campaign that embodied small-town values.

“As we are running on these values, let’s take them to the White House,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.