Battle of the Midwest: Comparing Tim Walz and JD Vance as running mates

Vice President Kamala Harris’s selection of Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate on Tuesday sets up a Midwestern showdown against Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), former President Donald Trump’s running mate. 

Democrats were already rallying around Walz to join the Harris ticket, given his upbeat personality during media interviews as he attacked Trump, Vance, and the rest of the GOP as “weird,” a phrase that is relatable to non-politicos.

“There’s a lot of folks excited about him. I think he’s just a good-natured human being, and I think the party is kind of cherishing that,” said Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist. “And I would argue J.D. does come off more contrarian, way more contrarian than Gov. Walz.” 

Walz’s Midwestern background has already prompted Democrats to claim he can nullify Vance’s benefits to the Trump campaign as an Ohio legislator who wrote about Appalachia in his book Hillbilly Elegy.

“This is really the guy that J.D. Vance is pretending to be. This is a guy from small-town America who has played by the rules,” Claire McCaskill, former Missouri senator, told MSNBC. “He’s going to be able to go after J.D. Vance and Donald Trump in a way that is really relatable and is kind of in sync with the Kamala Harris campaign.” 

The Minnesota governor quickly pounced on the uneven rollout of Vance joining Trump’s campaign after his comments criticizing “childless cat ladies” led to backlash across political parties, to the delight of Democrats. Republican allies have urged both Vance and Trump to focus more on attacking Harris, and now Walz, on policy as opposed to racial and gender identity to avoid angering centrist voters.

Vance, in his first public comments on Walz, criticized Democrats for pressuring President Joe Biden to step aside to pave the way for Harris.

“The Democrats have shown a willingness to pull a little switcheroo on us. So, I don’t even know if we’re actually gonna get a Tim Walz out of this campaign,” Vance said as he campaigned in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “Look, Tim Walz’s record is a joke. He’s been one of those far-left radicals in the entire United States government. … But I think that what Tim Walz’s selection says is that Kamala Harris has bent the knee to the far left of the party, which is what she always does.”

Walz has a favorable view with only 17% of people and an unfavorable with 12%, and 71% don’t know who he is or are unsure of how to rate him, according to an NPR-PBS News-Marist national poll released on Tuesday. In comparison, 34% have a favorable rating of Vance, up from 28% in July. But his unfavorable rating has increased from 31% in July to 43%, and 23% have never heard of him or don’t know how to rate him.

After Harris made her vice presidential selection, some of the most progressive Democrats took to social media to champion Walz, with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) exclaiming in a social media video post: “It’s Walz, baby. Let’s go! High school teacher, stand up. Public education, stand up.”

Other progressive groups echoed their excitement for Walz, citing his tenure as governor, including the 2023 legislation providing free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota students, support for expanding abortion access, and free college tuition for Minnesota families making less than $80,000. 

“Tim Walz is an effortless populist and represents the exact direction the Democratic Party needs,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, in a statement. “With Walz, Harris defied the corporate consulting class and indicated she will double down on the popular, pro-consumer, pro-worker agenda of the Biden-Harris administration.”

“Walz has proven that he has the necessary skills and authentic populism to go on offense — calling out the extremist and weird Trump-Vance agenda,” Taylor continued. “As governor, he passed a popular economic and voting rights agenda that will appeal to working families in the Midwest and nationwide.”

But Republicans wasted little time in denouncing Walz as a radical progressive. The Republican National Committee’s research team blasted out a video of Walz discussing socialism. “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values,” Walz said in the clip. “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

The Trump campaign branded Walz a “West Coast wannabe” in a statement sent out Tuesday morning.

“From proposing his own carbon-free agenda to suggesting stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”

Ariel Hill-Davis, a Republican strategist, suggested that Walz doesn’t have the same appeal as Harris’s other running mate contenders. “I think for kind of the independents looking at their options, I’m not sure that Walz is as reassuring as a [Sen. Mark] Kelly or a [Gov. Josh] Shapiro would have been,” she said. “But in terms of the matchup between Vance and Walz, I mean, I think it’s going to be interesting to see where there’s weird points of commonality.”

Trump doesn’t appear willing to debate Harris in the same way he was eager to debate Biden. The former president pulled out of a scheduled Sept. 10 ABC News debate against Harris and called for a new debate on Fox News set for Sept. 4. The current lack of a presidential debate will put more pressure on Walz and Vance to face off on the debate stage, though a debate has not been finalized.

“I think, on our side, I don’t think there’s a single Democrat that would be opposed to Gov. Walz having a debate with J.D.,” Ceraso said.

Walz will have his first public comments as Harris’s running mate later Tuesday evening, when the pair begin a seven-state battleground tour starting in Philadelphia.