Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appear on stage together during a campaign event on August 6, 2024 in Philadelphia. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appeared together in Philadelphia Tuesday at a rally on Temple University’s campus, the first time she has visited Pennsylvania as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for president. It’s been less than a month since Harris’ last visit to the City of Brotherly Love, but in that time she’s gone from being President Joe Biden’s running mate to leading at the top of the ticket.
The speculation about Harris’ running mate ended Tuesday morning with the announcement that she had chosen Walz. The running mates took the stage at the Liacouras Center to raucous applause from the full arena, with “Freedom” by Beyonce playing.
“We are the underdogs in this race. But we have the momentum, and I know exactly what we are up against,” Harris said. She said in her past roles as a prosecutor and senator she “took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who scammed consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.”
But her campaign is not just a fight against Trump, Harris added, “It’s a fight for the future.”
When Walz took the stage, he began by praising Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was also a finalist for the VP role.
“He can bring the fire. This is a visionary leader,” Walz said. “Also, I have to tell you, everybody in America knows when you need a bridge fixed call that guy,” in an apparent reference to Shapiro’s work to get a section of Interstate 95 reopened in 12 days after it was damaged in a fiery crash in 2023.
Walz next turned his focus on GOP vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, mocking his oft-told origin story of growing up in rural Ohio.
“Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best seller trashing that community,” Walz said. “Come on, that’s not what Middle America is. And I gotta tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy — that is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
Shapiro warmed up the crowd before Harris and Walz took the stage. The fired-up audience began a chant of “he’s a weirdo” when he mentioned Vance, a call-back to an observation Walz made and that the Harris campaign has run with, branding Trump and Vance as “weird.”
If Shapiro was disappointed to not get the VP nod, however, he did not show it, thanking the audience and praising the Democratic ticket.
“Let me tell you about my friend, Kamala Harris, someone I’ve been friends with for two decades,” Shapiro said. “She is courtroom tough. She has a big heart, and she is battle tested and ready to go. Whether in a courtroom, whether fighting as attorney general, whether remembering the people who have oftentimes been left behind when she was sitting in the halls of power in the Senate, Kamala Harris has always understood that you got to be, every day, for the people.”
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign released a statement shortly after the Walz news was announced Tuesday. “It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Trump campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. ” Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide. If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”
How it started/How it’s going
The month of July began with Biden trailing in the polls after a poor debate performance in late June raised concerns about whether he could beat GOP nominee Donald Trump. Two days before the Republican National Convention, a gunman shot at Trump during a rally in Butler, killing one rally-goer and injuring two others. The following weekend, Biden bowed out of the race and immediately endorsed Harris, with Democrats quickly coalescing behind her candidacy.
Late Monday, the Democratic National Committee announced Harris had secured the support of 99% of delegates to formally become the party’s presidential nominee, following the conclusion of a five-day virtual vote. She is expected to formally accept the nomination at the Democratic National Convention later this month.
The Biden-Harris campaign raised $284.1 million between January 2023 and June 30, 2024, while Trump’s campaign raised $217.2 million during that time period. Trump entered July with $128.1 million on hand, while Biden’s campaign had $96 million on hand.
But Harris raised $310 million in July according to her campaign, while Trump’s campaign said it raised $138 million.
And although the election is still less than three months away, Pennsylvanians are already being inundated with ads and will continue to be throughout the campaign. AdImpact data showed that Trump and Harris are slated to spend more than twice as much on advertising in Pennsylvania as any of the other pivotal battleground states.
Prior to Biden’s exit from the race, Trump was consistently polling slightly ahead of Biden in Pennsylvania. However, since Harris emerged as the presumptive nominee, some polling shows the race in a statistical tie.
“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle class families run deep. It’s personal,” Harris said in a statement Tuesday, offering praise for Walz’s record as governor, including passing a law to provide paid family and medical leave and making Minnesota the first state in the country to pass a law providing constitutional abortion protections, and a bill requiring universal background checks for gun purchases.
Tuesday is Harris’ seventh visit to Pennsylvania this year, according to the campaign. Her most recent appearance in the commonwealth was on July 13 in Philadelphia to court Asian-American voters. She’s also campaigned this cycle in Pittsburgh to tout the administration’s infrastructure investments, in Philadelphia to talk student debt with educators, and in Montgomery County to speak in support of reproductive rights. Harris has been the Biden administration’s primary voice on abortion rights, particularly in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
And in case anyone doubted Philadelphia’s importance in the 2024 race, Vance was in Philadelphia on Tuesday as well, for his first campaign event in Pennsylvania.
Trump was most recently in the state last Wednesday for an indoor rally in Harrisburg, his first campaign stop in the Keystone State since the assassination attempt.
Harris’s campaign swing with her running mate begins in Pennsylvania, then she’s scheduled to campaign in other key battleground states over the next few days. Planned campaign stops in Georgia and North Carolina were postponed due to Hurricane Debby.
Trump and Vance are also slated to make appearances in key battleground states later this week.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and X.
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