Walz tests anti-elitist message by knocking Vance’s Ivy League degree

CHICAGO, Illinois — Tim Walz is betting his vice presidential rival’s sterling academic credentials won’t impress voters.

The Minnesota governor, at a recent rally with his new boss, Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic nominee-designate, mocked the educational achievements of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). Vance, a 2013 Yale Law School graduate, was tapped for the undercard role on the Republican ticket by former President Donald Trump, the 2024 GOP nominee.

Vance wrote about his rise from Appalachia through Yale Law School and beyond in the bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy. But Walz is hoping Vance’s experiences will be seen by voters less as a sign of achieving the American dream through hard work than cronyism among a wealthy elite.

“Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale,” Walz said sarcastically at the rally. Vance “had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires. And then wrote a bestseller trashing that community. Come on, that’s not what middle America is,” Walz continued.

The governor, in a recent interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, expanded on that point, saying, “None of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale, and none of them went on to be venture capitalists, or whatever.”

There’s a certain irony in these attacks on Vance by Walz, a graduate of Chadron State College, a public school in his home state of Nebraska, and an MS from Minnesota State University, Mankato. After all, according to polls, Census data, and other statistics, more college-educated voters are now voting for Democrats. While those without a degree prefer Republicans.

That’s not precisely the charge made by Walz against Vance. But it follows a similar anti-elitist logic. And it’s part of a broader populist push by the Harris-Walz ticket. On Friday, the Democratic campaign released a series of policy proposals aimed at middle- and lower-middle-class voters.

The proposals include eliminating the medical debt for millions of Americans, along with the “first-ever” ban on price gouging for groceries and food, Harris said at a North Carolina campaign rally. Along with a cap on prescription drug costs. There’s also a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers. And a child tax credit that would provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life.

However, nothing in the Harris-Walz plan explains how any of this would be paid for. Yet the themes are expected to loom large at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which will take place Monday-Thursday, Aug. 19-22.

Whether attacks on elite academic degrees are an effective political tactic, as part of this strategy, remains to be seen. Since educational achievement is for many, part of the American dream.

There could be an upside in Walz’s line of attack against Vance’s elite education pedigree, said Brian Rosenwald, a political historian at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The lesson of the Trump years has been whether it’s bad policy or good policy for the country, populism works,” Rosenwald said in an interview. “A lot of people think they’re getting squashed by society and that they’re not getting a fair shake. Whether that populism is attacking big business for Democrats, or Trump capitalizing on the disdain for elites, it’s effective.”

Rosenwald added, “It’s effective for Walz to, in effect, say, ‘I’m a guy from rural Nebraska, who spent 24 years in the military, who went to a state college. While you, J.D., went to the most elite law school in the country and went into venture capital.’”

Though the attacks could have limited appeal.

“Is it going to move a lot of voters? Probably not,” Rosenwald said. “We’re talking about the Number Two’s on the ticket, not the Number One’s.”

Longtime Campaign Tactic

Walz’s attacks on his opponent’s elite academic credentials are nothing new in American politics. One person who can testify to their effectiveness is former President George W. Bush.

In 1978, before his father held national office and Bush family members had such widespread name recognition, the future president, in his first bid for public office, sought a House seat in West Texas. Bush’s Democratic opponent, Kent Hance, claimed the Republican was “not a real Texan,” since he was a graduate of Yale, and Harvard Business School. Hance pointed to his own degrees, from Texas Tech University for college, and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Hance won by seven points. That was the only time Bush was ever defeated in an election, in a political career spanning two wins as Texas governor, and, of course, a pair of terms as president.

Republican candidates increasingly picked up on the anti-elitist education theme as the party began appealing more to economically downscale voters — an important element in Trump’s 2016 winning coalition. A preview of this theme came four years early during the Republican primaries, ultimately won by former private equity executive Mitt Romney, an alum of Brigham Young University, with degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, in a January 2012 New Hampshire campaign appearance, accused then-President Barack Obama of “elitist snobbery” and “hubris” for suggesting that “under my administration, every child should go to college.”

Santorum responded indignantly, “Who are you? Who are you to say that every child in America go … I mean the hubris of this president to think that he knows what’s best for you. I … you know there is … I have seven kids. Maybe they’ll all go to college. But, if one of my kids wants to go and be an auto mechanic, good for him. That’s a good-paying job — using your hands and using your mind.”

Santorum added, “The kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives. Rise up, America. Defend your own freedoms.”

Santorum wasn’t the ideal political vessel for this non-college message. He went to college at Pennsylvania State University, and received his JD from one of its two affiliated law schools, Dickinson School of Law. Plus, an MBA at the University of Pittsburgh. Yet it gelled with Santorum’s overall populist message that year, when he finished as the runner-up to Romney for the Republican nomination.

Trump took the theme a step further in 2016, famously exclaiming at a Nevada campaign rally in February that year while (successfully) seeking the Republican presidential nomination, “I love the poorly educated.”

Trump’s point was that his campaign appealed to a wide group of voters. Tim Walz was presumably making a similar argument in knocking J.D. Vance’s elite law degree. Whether voters find that line of attack convincing will become clear after Election Day, Nov. 5.