ROMULO, Michigan – Vice President Kamala Harris declared herself and her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz“joyful warriors” against Donald Trump on Wednesday as they spent their first full day of campaigning together across the Midwest. They got an unusual glimpse of how tight the race in the region will be when they overlapped on a Wisconsin track with Republican Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance.
Democrats visited Wisconsin and Michigan, hoping to shore up support among the younger, more diverse and labor-friendly voters who were instrumental in helping President Joe Biden win the 2020 election.
Harris said at the first rally of the day in Eau Claire: “As Tim Walz likes to point out, we are joyful warriors.” Contributing to that sentiment, Harris’ campaign said it raised $36 million in the first 24 hours after she announced Walz as her running mate.
The vice president said the pair look to the future with optimism, unlike Trump, the former president and Republican candidate for the White House, whom she accused of being stuck in the past and preferring a confrontational political style – even when she herself criticized her opponent.
“Someone who suggests that we should do away with the Constitution of the United States should never again have the opportunity to sit behind the seal of the United States,” Harris said, raising her voice.
Later, at an evening rally in an airport hangar outside Detroit, where the campaign announced a crowd of 15,000, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, herself often mentioned as a future presidential candidate, declared: “We need a strong woman at the White House. and it was about time.
“This election is going to be a fight,” Harris told the crowd in Michigan. “We like a good fight.”
The move was especially important for Harris and Walz as Biden’s winning coalition four years ago showed signs of fraying over the summer — especially in Michigan, which emerged as a focal point of Democratic divisions about Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
With the president now out of the race, leaders in the Arab-American community and major unions say they are encouraged by Harris’ selection as running mate. The addition of Walz to the ticket calmed some tensionssignaling to some leaders that Harris had heard concerns about another leading candidate for vice president, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who they felt had gone too far in his support of Israel.
“The party is recognizing that there is a coalition that needs to be rebuilt,” said Abdullah Hammoud, mayor of Dearborn, Michigan. “Choosing Walz is another sign of good faith.”
Trump also emphasized appealing to Midwestern voters with his choice of Vance, a senator from Ohio, as his running mate. Vance bracketed the Harris-Walz pass with his own appearances at Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday.
It overlapped enough that while Harris was still greeting a group of Girl Scouts who had come to see her arrive at Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley Regional Airport, Vance’s campaign plane landed nearby and taxied into the distance. Harris posed for a group photo with the girls around the same time Vance was disembarking and began walking to Air Force Two, followed by his security guards.
The vice president finally climbed into her motorcade and she walked away before they could interact. Still, the fact that the pair came so close to doing so was unusual, given the carefully planned nature of their campaign calendars.
“I just wanted to take a look at my future plane,” Vance later told reporters, meaning he would fly on Air Force Two if he and Trump were elected in November. He also criticized Harris for not answering reporters’ questions, although she sometimes responds to shouted questions when boarding or exiting the plane for campaign stops.
At his subsequent Eau Claire event, Vance referred to the reporters traveling with him by saying, “I thought they must be alone because Kamala Harris won’t answer any questions.”
“If these people want to call me weird, I call it a badge of honor,” Vance said, responding to the nickname Walz used to describe him, which made the Minnesota governor notable online in the days before Harris named him her running mate. of sheet metal.
Walz had some critical words for Vance in Wisconsin and Michigan, but trained most of his harshest words on Trump, saying the former president “makes a mockery of our laws, he sows chaos and division among people, and that’s without mentioning of the work he did as President.”
Walz also emphasized that he and Harris are promoting their neighborhood and common community, even suggesting that their state’s football fans were happy for Detroit’s long-running NFL team when it nearly made it to the most recent Super Bowl: “The Vikings fans are proud of the Lions. ”
Republicans are trying to portray Harris and Walz as too liberal for the Midwest, with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, saying in a conference call that Walz is “part of the crazy radical left, just like Vice President Harris ”.
But Democratic enthusiasm has increased since Harris announced her candidacy and chose Walz as her running mate.
“We love Joe. Joe has been an incredible president, but he’s just not the same messenger. And sometimes you need a better messenger,” said Dan Miller of Pelican Lake, Wisconsin, who attended the Walz-Harris rally. “And this is Kamala.”
The push could be crucial in Detroit, which is nearly 80% black, where leaders for months I had warned government officials that voter apathy could cost them dearly in a city that is normally a stronghold for their party. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, said the excitement in the city right now is “mind-blowing.” He compared it to Barack Obama’s first run for president in 2008, when voters waited in long lines to help elect the country’s first black president.
Some Democratic leaders in Michigan were concerned that choosing the wrong running mate could slow that momentum and fracture a coalition that only recently began to unify.
Arab American leaders, who hold significant influence in Michigan due to a large presence in metro Detroit, were vocal in their opposition to Shapiro due to his past comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
These leaders specifically pointed to a comment he made earlier this year about protests on college campuses, which they felt unfairly compared the actions of student protesters to those of white supremacists. Shapiro, who is Jewish, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, although he remained a staunch supporter of Israel.
Osama Siblani, editor of the Dearborn-based Arab American News and a prominent leader in Michigan’s large Muslim community, was among those who met with White House adviser Tom Perez in Michigan last week. Perez has kept in touch with some Dearborn leaders since he and others senior officials traveled there with Biden in an effort to mend ties with the community.
Siblani said he met with Perez for more than an hour on July 29 and told him that if Harris chose Shapiro, it would “end” future conversations.
“Not choosing Shapiro is a very good step. This opens the door a little more for us,” said Siblani.
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Joey Cappelletti reported from Michigan. Associated Press writers Mark Vancleave in Eau Claire, Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, Tom Krisher in Detroit, Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, and Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.
