Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday, opting for the Minnesota governor as the partner most likely to complement her in a historic — and bruising — bid for the White House.
Walz had been on a shortlist with a string of other
Democratic figures seen as broadening Harris’s appeal as she sprints into the
contest against Donald Trump.
Aiming to make history as the first woman president, Harris
— already a trailblazer as the first female and first Black and South Asian
vice president — has little time before Election Day on November 5.
The choice was first reported by CNN early Tuesday morning.
Expectations had always been that Harris would pick a white
man to balance the ticket — and the kind of Democrat who can help counter
attacks from Republicans that she is too far to the left.
Walz fits that description as a 60-year-old Midwesterner
with a folksy manner from a state that could be light years from the coastal
elites of California, where Harris comes from, or the East Coast.
He will also appeal to progressives after having championed
popular Democratic policies including cannabis legalization and increasing
worker protections.
The duo will hit the campaign trail immediately, launching
an intense, five-day swing through battleground states starting Tuesday in the
biggest prize, Pennsylvania.
Fresh from securing the official Democratic nomination
overnight, Harris can now head to the national convention in Chicago in two
weeks in total control of her party.
It has been a remarkable journey for Harris, who only
entered the race last month when President Joe Biden withdrew, bowing to
mounting concerns over his mental acuity and ability at 81 to serve a second
term.
In a campaign that is barely two weeks old, the 59-year-old
former prosecutor has obliterated fundraising records, attracted huge crowds
and dominated social media on her way to erasing what had been Trump’s growing
lead in polls over Biden.
The latest presidential poll by the University of
Massachusetts Amherst released Monday has Harris leading Trump nationally by
three points — 46 percent to 43 percent — compared to a four-point lead for
Trump over Biden in January.
– First major test –
In the swing states that decide the Electoral College
contest in US elections, Harris is neck and neck with Trump, who shocked the
world with his 2016 presidential victory but was beaten by Biden in 2020.
Picking a vice presidential running mate was seen as the
first big test for Harris in her bid to become the country’s chief executive.
“It tells you about her thought process,” Amy Walter, a
polling expert from Cook Political Report newsletter, told CBS News.
Now, Harris and Walz will face the first test of their
ground game as they make the nationwide swing this week from Philadelphia to
Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. Tropical Storm Debby has forced the
postponement of a stop in another swing state, Georgia, and according to media
reports also North Carolina.
Pennsylvania is part of the “blue wall” that carried Biden
to the White House in 2020, alongside Michigan and Wisconsin. That was one of
the main reasons many expected Harris to instead pick that state’s governor,
Josh Shapiro.
Also on the vice presidential shortlist had been former
astronaut and current senator Mark Kelly, of Arizona, and Kentucky Governor
Andy Beshear.
Trump was riding high politically last month after surviving
an assassination attempt at a rally, and then using the Republican convention
to highlight his image of vigor against the physically frail Biden.
But with Biden’s dramatic exit and Harris’s fast start, he
is scrambling to recalibrate.
At a rally last Saturday in Georgia, Trump called Harris a
“Marxist” and a “radical left freak,” claiming she would cause an “economic
crash.”
Three days earlier, he shocked many when he told an audience
of Black journalists that Harris had “turned Black” out of political
expediency.
Where Biden often attacked Trump as a threat to democracy,
given his unprecedented refusal to accept his loss in 2020, Harris’s team has
honed a sharper — more meme-friendly — line built around branding Trump and his
vice presidential pick J.D. Vance “weird.”
On Saturday, the Harris campaign said Trump was “scared” to
debate her after he turned down a previously scheduled televised debate on ABC,
while saying he’d be ready to debate her on Fox News — a network that has for
years given him support.
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