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Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, betting that he can appeal to working-class voters in swing states to deliver a Democratic victory in November’s presidential election.
According to a person familiar with the matter, Walz was selected ahead of other top contenders including Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Walz, 60, is expected to appear with Harris at a campaign rally in Philadelphia this evening, before going to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Detroit, Savannah, Raleigh and western Wisconsin.
The revamped Democratic ticket comes after US President Joe Biden shook up the 2024 race by dropping out and anointing his vice-president to succeed him.
Walz is serving his second gubernatorial term after being first elected to the office in 2018. He has the potential to appeal to moderate, working-class and rural voters who could put Harris over the top in battleground states.
Born in rural Nebraska, he taught high school social studies and married a fellow teacher before entering politics, and also served in the National Guard. Despite his appeal as a moderate, he was the favourite among progressive Democrats to be Harris’s running mate.
In recent weeks, Walz has emerged as a more prominent national political figure, especially in his attacks against Trump’s vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.
After a clip from 2021 went viral, in which Vance warned the US was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies”, citing Harris as an example, Walz became the face of the Democratic effort to paint Vance as “weird”. His quotable soundbites flooded people’s social media feeds.
“These are weird people on the other side,” Walz said in one MSNBC appearance. “My God, they went after cat people — good luck with that. Turn on the internet and see what cat people do when you go after ‘em. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad,” he said in another.
Before becoming governor of Minnesota, Walz served in the US House of Representatives, representing a largely rural district. His connection with rural voters in the Midwest could help peel them away from Trump in November.
The governor could also help defend Harris — who was raised by academics in the San Francisco Bay Area — against Republican accusations that she is a member of the coastal elite.
There has been a resurgence of enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket since Biden stepped aside. Harris has narrowed the polling gap with Trump nationally and in swing states, according to a Financial Times analysis. She has also raced ahead in the competition for donations.
Harris was formally nominated in a virtual roll call on August 2, ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19. The party avoided a messy process to replace Biden by coalescing quickly around Harris in the days following the president’s exit.
Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington