The Latest: Harris and Walz kick off their 2024 election campaign
Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, in an effort to bolster the Democratic ticket in the Midwestern states.
After an introduction from Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, she and Walz made their joint debut at a meeting Tuesday evening in Philadelphia, with which they begin their tour of the main sights.
Follow AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest news:
The Republican Party vice presidential candidate boarded his campaign plane with his wife Usha.
Vance travels to the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, the same two states his Democratic opponents will also visit on the same day.
The midwestern Democrats’ about-face comes a day after Vice President Kamala Harris formally introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, appearing with him at a rally in Philadelphia, just hours after Vance made a campaign stop in the same city.
Both campaigns had planned to travel to North Carolina this week as well, but those plans were canceled due to poor weather conditions.
The most turbulent presidential campaign in generations will now unfold as a 90-day sprint across two fronts: the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt.
With her choice of a Governor of the Midwest As running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris pushed to strengthen the “Blue Wall” states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that Democrats need to win to retain the White House.
Harris, the first Black woman and woman of South Asian descent to lead a major party, and former president Donald TrumpThe Republican candidate will also compete in the Sun Belt for Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, a constituency that has expanded since Biden decided to withdraw from the race.
Tim Walz made two flying starts, the first largely unnoticed, the second underappreciated.
The first came earlier this year, when the governor and vice president visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul. That visit underscored the shared values between the two, according to people familiar with Harris’ thinking. Key issues that resonated with Harris included Walz’s advocacy of in vitro fertilization and child support — an idea Walz has used in Minnesota.
The next key moment came on July 23, two days after Biden’s withdrawal, when Walz made a dig at Trump and Vance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that quickly went viral.
“These guys are just weird,” Walz said, in his characteristically informal manner.
For years, Democrats including Biden and Harris have launched high-sounding attacks on Trump as a threat to democracy. They highlighted his legal troubles, racist and sexist rhetoric, the far-right policies in the “Project 2025” agenda that Trump opposes. The jovial Minnesota governor summed it all up in one word: “weird.” And he smiled as he did it.
Social media did its thing, and Harris’ campaign took notice. Within days, the vice president — and other vice presidential candidates — were using “weird” as a slur.