By Matthew Thompson on August 17, 2024
Two weeks ago, on August 6th, Vice President Kamala Harris selected the little-known 2nd term governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz to be her running mate. If you had been following the “veepstakes” in the last few days before her announcement, you’d know that as recently as August 5th, the Harris campaign narrowed down their search to two candidates: Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Gov. Tim Walz. That was down from the laundry list of cis-gender, largely heterosexual, white, mid-western, male governors. All of those men had impressive records, many had won in tough races, and all had a seemingly moderate appeal.
According to Ernesto Londono, who appeared on the August 7th episode of The New York Time’s podcast, The Daily, Walz came out of nowhere. Walz was not a national figure, nor was he from a key swing state. He had not “written the kind of memoir” which normally tips off those among the political and journalistic elite that he was seeking higher office. In the early days of Harris’s V.P. search, most of the punditry had the names of either Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper, or J.B Pritzker dripping from their lips. Walz was very much a dark horse until quite recently when Reuters broke the news that veepstakes had narrowed to him and Shapiro.
Since then, the narrative of the race has dramatically shifted. The Harris-Walz ticket has closed the polling gap between the Trump-Vance ticket in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This comes as more Americans have a higher approval rating for Waltz as V.P. pick than J.D. Vance, who has been marred by a series of comments he has made about single women and families.
This race has changed incredibly since July, 21st when Joe Biden announced he would no longer seek a second term as president. It has felt like a lifetime has happened since then. With Labor-Day on the horizon, which signifies traditional start to the election season, the 2024 race is fully underway, and fully remade from just one month ago. And with just over two months left until election day on Tuesday, November 5th, anything could happen. American’s opinions of Kamala Harris campaign are still forming, but the Walz pick makes clear that she is trying to appeal to the widest possible coalition of voters to defeat Donald Trump and J.D Vance this fall.