In his first speech as Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz touted his small-town, rural roots and roasted his Republican counterpart JD Vance.
Walz was named on the Democratic presidential ticket on Tuesday (6 August) because as a “governor, a coach, a teacher and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his,” Harris wrote on X/Twitter.
Harris became the Democratic presumptive nominee for the presidency after Joe Biden announced his decision not to seek re-election. She was officially confirmed as the first woman of colour at the top of a major party ticket on Monday (5 August).
Just hours after being named, Walz appeared alongside the vice-president at a rally In Philadelphia, in front of a crowd of about 12,000 Democrat voters.
Opportunity to reintroduce Harris
As well as introducing the relatively unknown governor Minnesota to the nation, the rally served as an opportunity to reintroduce Harris and the Democrats’ campaign.
“Thank you, madam vice-president, for the trust you put in me, but, maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy,” Walz said, describing Harris as someone who “has fought on the side of the American people”.
The governor went on to say: “She took on the predators, she took on the fraudsters, she took down the trans-national gangs. She stood up against powerful corporate interests and she never hesitated to reach across the aisle if it meant improving peoples’ lives.”
Positioned as a teacher first
The campaign is keen to show Walz as a man of the people: a teacher first and politician second.
Much was said about the fact that was an educator, a football coach and a veteran – careers with which many Americans can connect.
Walz is the “kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having,” Harris said, before recounting how he has always been progressive, pointing out that he was the faculty adviser for his school’s gay-straight alliance, knowing “the signal it would send to have a football coach get involved”.
The potential vice-president also used his speech as an opportunity to quell any uncertainty older, white voters might have about Harris.
“I see you down there. I see those old, white guys,” he said. “Some of us are old enough to remember when it was Republicans who were talking about freedom. It turns out now what they meant was that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office.
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbours and their personal choices that they make. Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: mind your own damn business.”
He isn’t afraid to roast the opposition
During his speech, Walz also took aim at Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate on the Republican ticket, with a nod to the viral claim that the Ohio senator was sexually involved with his couch.
“Like all regular people, I grew up in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, then wrote a bestseller trashing that community. That’s not what Middle America is,” Walz said.
“I got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy… that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
The salacious joke, which was posted on X by a now-deleted user, suggested there was a section in Vance’s 2016 memoir where he pulled a real-life version of Jay’s human-furniture relationship with Brad Polumbo, from animated Netflix sitcom Big Mouth, by pleasuring himself with a couch.
The user wrote they “can’t say for sure but he might be the first VP [vice-president] pick to have admitted in a New York Times bestseller to f**king an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, pp. 179-181).”
The claim was false and quickly debunked by fact-checkers but that did not stop people running with it. Even Harris’ campaign tweeted: “JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women.”
During the speech, Walz took aim at Trump too, saying: “He froze in the face of the COVID crisis. He drove our economy into the ground.”
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