Vice President Kamala Harris' embrace of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz may not provide the boost her campaign hopes for in mobilizing median voters, political strategists told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Harris announced Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, and the campaign has since Emphasized Waltz is a Midwesterner, a military veteran, and a working-class man. camouflage Cast Though his campaign has dubbed him a “defender of America's working families,” political strategists told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Trump's efforts likely won't actually resonate with blue-collar voters. (Related article: Vice Presidential candidate Harris endorses bill allowing states to take away custody of children from parents who oppose gender reassignment surgery)
“If you look at Walz and the media surrounding him, he works on cars, he works on a farm, he carries a rifle and he has a dog that he hunts birds with,” John McHenry, a Republican polling analyst and vice president of North Star Opinion Research, told DCNF. “That image seems to appeal to working-class voters in the Midwest who didn't go to college. But if you look at his vote on the southern border and his openness to illegal immigrants in Minnesota, those issues may not sit well with working-class voters in the Midwest.”
Waltz Signed He passed a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses in the state in March 2023. He also approved taxpayer-funded legislation. health care He has advocated for higher tuition fees for illegal immigrants and in 2018 voiced his support for “sanctuary” policies.
Growing up, I learned to be generous to my neighbors, to compromise my values without compromising, and to work for the common good.Kamala Harris And I, too, believe in the common good, the fundamental promise of America. And we are ready to fight for it. And as she says… pic.twitter.com/5SfrDRqx7C
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 6, 2024
The Harris-Waltz campaign Filled Waltz's Social Media Accounts comment He criticized Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio for talking about growing up in rural Appalachia, saying “he profited from it” and “destroyed middle-class America.” release Camouflage goods and waltzes on repeat talked About his background with firearms, both in the military and hunting.
“It's an interesting strategy,” McHenry told DCNF. “Normally you'd try to balance the candidates a little more ideologically, but that's not where the Democratic Party is at right now.”
Governor Walz also issued an executive order protecting access to gender reassignment surgery in the state and worked to solidify Minnesota as a “safe haven” for abortion following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. In 2023, the governor signed a law creating abortion without any restrictions into the state constitution.
Walz's 2022 Minnesota gubernatorial results do not suggest he will appreciably gain the support of blue-collar voters that Democrats have lost in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. https://t.co/knKPzbd05E
— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) August 6, 2024
“The bills he's trying to pass in Minnesota are especially tough on working-class voters,” John McLaughlin, a Trump campaign pollster and CEO of McLaughlin & Associates, told DCNF. “His plans to phase out fossil fuels and curb skyrocketing utility bills hit Minnesotans hard.”
February 2023, Waltz Signed Enacted legislation requiring all energy produced or obtained in Minnesota to be carbon-free by 2040, which further Aggressive That's sooner than California's 2045 deadline. Walz's climate record during his gubernatorial career is also Landed Give him some Recommendation Primary Environment group.
Walz was governor during the 2020 riots that erupted in response to the death of George Floyd. Photos from the riots in Minneapolis showed cars and buildings being set on fire, stores being looted and a police station being vandalized.
“I don't believe that working-class white America is a radical socialist who wants to burn down their cities,” Republican strategist Scott Jennings told DCNF.
“You could smell the tires burning,” Walz's wife said of the 2020 Minneapolis riots, “and it was very real. And we had our windows down for as long as we could because we felt like that was a touchstone of what was going on.” pic.twitter.com/dAeE4fQjBn
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 6, 2024
Democratic strategist Dheeraj Chand told DCNF that Harris may have miscalculated Walz's candidacy in another way.
“He's not a hypocrite, but he's not working class,” Chand told DCNF. “He's very much lower-middle class. But to someone who drives a Bentley, the difference between someone who drives a Toyota and someone who drives a Camry is not obvious.”
Chand argued that the Democratic Party has historically been the party of “elites,” which may contribute to its inability to understand the nuances of working-class, middle-class and lower-class Americans.
“The problem with a lot of Democrats is that, for better or worse, we're easily marketed as a party made up of so-called high-caste people,” Chand told DCNF. “It's easy to point at the Democrats and say look, they're a bunch of elitists who don't care about anything except their own elitism. And there's a lot of truth in that, because a lot of them are actually Democrats.”
“But the beauty of a vote for Walz is that it erases those accusations,” Chand told DCNF. “No one looks at a guy who drives a Toyota Camry and accuses him of being elitist. No one looks at a guy who went to public school and accuses him of cronyism and entitlement.”
The Harris-Waltz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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