WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Minnesota Governor Tim Walz launches this week and holds his first solo events as Vice President Kamala Harris ‘ running mate, who scours five states for campaign cash and addresses a major union meeting.
Walz is scheduled to speak Tuesday at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees convention in Los Angeles before headlining a campaign fundraiser in Newport Beach, California. The 1.4 million-member union has endorsed Harris and says its members are “ready to mobilize to vote in November.”
On Wednesday, Walz will address fundraisers in Denver and Boston, and on Thursday he will do the same in Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York.
Walz’s focus on fundraising this week comes after he stormed through a series of battlefield states with Harris last week to introduce themselves to voters across the country. The two held rallies in PennsylvaniaWisconsin, Michigan, Arizona And Nevada.
Senator from Ohio JD Vancewho was announced as a Republican Donald Trump ‘s running mate during the GOP convention in Milwaukeehad its own rollout largely overshadowed by unforeseen events. It came after a attempted murder against the former president the previous weekend and in favor of President Joe Biden gave up his re-election bid and endorsed Harris during the next one.
Walz has spiced up his early campaign appearances with talk about joy and positivitystressing that he and Harris stand for kindness and neighborliness. But he has been vocal about Trump’s policies and the former president’s 34 indictments in a New York hush-money case.
Vance, meanwhile, has leaned more into the traditional No. 2 role of hurling political attacks at the opposition. He spent much of last week holding his own events in the same states Harris and Walz visited, arguing that the Democratic ticket was too ultra-liberal for most Americans.
The senator has also suggested that Harris choose Walz over another candidate for his running mate, the governor of Pennsylvania. Josh Shapirobecause Shapiro’s public support for Israel at war with Hamas would have angered some progressives.
Vance said that choosing Walz meant that Harris was taking advice from the “Hamas wing of her party.” He also criticized Walz’s military record, arguing that his retirement prior to his National Guard Unit’s deployment to Iraq and his implication that he had served in a combat zone suggested “stolen bravery nonsense.” Over the weekend, Harris’ campaign said that Walz “slip of the tongue” when he referred to “weapons of war that I carried in the war.”
Vance has also criticized Harris and Walz for not attending the press conferences. When his plane coincided with Harris’s at a tarmac in Wisconsin where both sides were holding events last week, Vance said began walking toward the vice president’s processionand said he wanted to talk to the reporters who were traveling with her, since she herself had not done so.
Haris still have to do an important interview since Biden left the race, but has said she plans to do so later in the month. She briefly took questions from the press who accompanied her during her travels to the battlefield last week — something Walz did not do, except for one session in which he answered questions off the record, meaning his answers could not be shared publicly.
Vance has appeared on several podcasts to appeal to a younger voter base. At 40, he is closer to that demographic than the other three contenders. Trump is 78, Harris is 59 and Walz is 60.
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Associated Press editor Meg Kinnard contributed to this report from Columbia, South Carolina.