This autumn, Tim Walz will be seen more often—in orange. The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Walz, is out pheasant hunting wearing a colorful vest. That is when he isn’t singing, “Save big money at Menards,” talking about washing his gutters, or sporting gaudy flannels.
In anticipation of runoff contests in battleground states where shrinking loss margins in red counties could put them over the top, Vice President Kamala Harris and Vice President Walz are attempting to draw in a certain type of electorate, one that is typified by the EveryDad persona, complete with his moniker, “Coach Walz.”
Democrats claim that for years, they virtually gave former President Donald Trump all of the rural counties and even some of the suburbs. Since 2016, rural counties in states like Wisconsin and Nevada have become deeply red areas associated with President Trump, making them nearly impossible for the left to penetrate.
Promoting Walz’s Midwest origins, military service, labor connections, hunting expertise, and football coaching career, Harris campaign strategists feel they have an edge over white moderate and blue-collar voters, to whom Harris may have a softer appeal.
Using her experience as a prosecutor and the narrative that she created about being the immigrant daughter who toiled at McDonald’s before moving up the ranks to become vice president, Harris has also made a signal to those voters.
All things considered, it’s a script that resembles Barack Obama’s from 2008, when he selected Joe Biden to be his running partner. In order to appeal to labor and white working-class voters, Obama then, yet early in his political career, enlisted the help of a veteran of Washington with experience in international affairs.
Major figures from Obama’s staff are assisting Harris in running his campaign, including Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser on communications, and David Plouffe, a senior adviser on strategy.
In 2020, the same tactic was employed, but with Biden and Harris switching places. As Biden promoted his connections to labor and Scranton, Pennsylvania background, Harris was supposed to help spark enthusiasm among women and voters of color as a vice presidential candidate.
The Harris-Walz team is receiving advice from John Anzalone, who served as top pollster for both the Obama and Biden campaigns in 2020. Any presidential political strategist, he added, should keep in mind that Biden won in 2020 with just a 44,000-vote margin in battleground states. Anzalone went on to say that significant third-party investment in rural regions might have been the deciding factor.
You cannot merely engage in petty politics. He advised doing base expansion and tightening margins in more challenging demographics. “It’s about getting your ass kicked by a smaller margin, but you still might get your ass kicked.”
Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina declared that Harris’s month has been “the most successful month in American political history since Barack Obama’s ascent following his victory in the South Carolina primary.”
“However, he lost Pennsylvania and Ohio in that 2008 Democratic primary campaign, and things got harder,” Messina continued. “Vice President Harris has clawed his way to a tie.” It may be that she is ahead by a point, but it is still very close.
In order to connect with potential voters that they claim Democrats have mostly disregarded for years, the Biden campaign set up roots in rural counties of battleground states months ago.
Dan Kanninen, the battlefield director for the Harris-Walz campaign, stated that “For a long time, Democrats were less effective at understanding the need of sort of showing up in locations where it might be a little harder to win.” “Because the votes weren’t concentrated in one area, it was less effective to travel to rural America and more effective to concentrate on the suburbs and large cities.”
As the pattern persisted cycle after cycle, Kanninen observed, “You kind of just lose folks altogether.” In red counties, Democrats were suffering startling losses of 80% to 20%, he claimed.
Early on, the campaign countered that by establishing staff offices and talking to voters in local regions, as well as by hosting events like surrogate bus trips through more remote areas, according to Kanninen. He continued, stating that voters began to arrive and that they “may have needed the invitation, needed a place to go.”
In those regions, the campaign is now emphasizing the Harris-Walz ticket. A few of the DNC’s key themes, such as having Walz’s football team take the stage, encouraging “USA!” chants, and showcasing Democratic lawmakers who had served in the armed forces, all contributed to achieving that objective.
According to a person close to the campaign, “It’s something you can do to draw in voters who haven’t previously supported the Democratic Party.” You’ll witness things like: Walz versus [JD] Vance, who will be more adept at shooting pheasants? Our strategy is to keep them off-balance.
The campaign sees a chance to recapture symbols that the Republican Party has come to be identified with, such as football, hunting, and traditional patriotism.
Walz is also anticipated to again trot out a biographical line that garnered a lot of praise during the convention, describing himself as a father of small children in his 40s with no prior political experience running for office in a heavily Republican area.
However, what’s interesting? To loud applause from the assembly, he declared, “Never underestimate a public school teacher.”
One of the two groups’ initial gatherings drew 12,000 attendees from rural Eau Claire, Wisconsin. There might be another benefit for Walz in rural Wisconsin. The campaign claims that over 600,000 Wisconsinites, who are primarily from rural areas, reside in counties directly across the river from Minnesota or in media markets in Minnesota. This indicates that Walz is significantly more well-known in those locations.
In Nevada alone, more than 3,000 new volunteers have enrolled from rural regions since Biden endorsed Harris on July 21.
According to campaign organizers, the campaign will also focus on problems related to the administration. Examples of these issues include highlighting the fact that recent infrastructure spending is intended to provide high-speed internet to rural communities and Medicaid expansion, which has gained traction in areas such as rural North Carolina. Six counties in the state, which has not produced a Democratic presidential nominee since 2008, have already seen the opening of offices in rural areas.
The Harris campaign is present in Wisconsin’s red counties, where Democrats have never before had offices.
In various states, the term “rural” might indicate different things. While rural counties in Wisconsin and Nevada, for example, are primarily white, rural counties in North Carolina and Georgia are more varied. Harris’ campaign emphasizes the administration’s accomplishments in Georgia, which include significant investments in Georgia farmers, the creation of new employment in clean energy, and rural health care.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., stated this week that rural areas might also have a say in determining the Senate’s and, consequently, the next president’s legislative agenda, while speaking to reporters in Chicago.
Schumer declared, “We won’t win the rural counties, but we will narrow the margin by which Republicans win them.”
Meanwhile, Republicans portrayed Democrats as disengaged from voters who are worried about border security, gas prices, an increase in auto insurance premiums in states like Nevada, and grocery costs.
These are concerns that should be discussed at the kitchen table, and they eventually come to light. Additionally, Kamala Harris hasn’t done anything for us in the last three years, according to Trump advisor Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada GOP party.
Meanwhile, McDonald acknowledged the ferocity of the race in a state where early polls had Trump leading Biden by significant margins. The Democratic Party’s numbers have increased since Harris entered the presidential race.
“Both of us and them are running a serious campaign,” he declared.
According to Trump’s staff, their confidence in the breadth of support in rural America is greater than ever. In addition to labeling Harris as “dangerously liberal,” it also portrays Walz as an ineffective governor and charges him with lying about his military experience.
In a statement, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “With over 300 offices, tens of thousands of active volunteers, and hundreds of paid staff members in the battleground states, Team Trump is actively engaged in voter turnout in rural, suburban, and urban areas where President Trump is making historic gains and forcing the Democrats to play defense.”
“If Tim Walz and dangerously leftist Kamala Harris want to win over hardworking rural American families who are being left behind by Kamala’s awful policies as vice president, they should reconsider,” the speaker continued. “Now more than ever, rural America is Trump Country.”