Mayor Kyle Arganbright steered his dusty diesel truck through this ranching town, past the rodeo grounds and livestock auction, and pointed out the football field of the Valentine High School Badgers, whose roster once included a teenage Tim Walz. Next up: the quiet, tree-lined street where the Walz family once lived.

After Walz, the Minnesota governor, was named Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, reporters descended on his hometown of Valentine, population 2,600.

“Now I’m the local Tim Walz tour guide. Write that on the list of things I never thought I’d do,” Arganbright said with a laugh as a fishing rod, stretching from the back seat, rattled on his dashboard.

Harris and Walz come from vastly different worlds.

Harris is the biracial daughter of immigrants whose career was forged by the rough-and-tumble Democratic politics of the Bay Area — a place nationally synonymous with West Coast liberalism.

Walz is a white guy who spent formative years in Valentine, the remote seat of Cherry County, the nation’s top producer of beef cows.

Walz leans heavily on his upbringing, and during a campaign stop in Los Angeles this week, he even walked onstage to the John Mellencamp song “Small Town.”

But here in Cherry County — where former President Trump won 87% of the vote in 2020 — the presence of a hometown boy on the Democratic ticket is, well, a little awkward.

Asked if Walz might flip many votes, Arganbright chuckled.

“Um, no,” he said.

Arganbright, a fifth-generation Valentinian, said most voters here are Republicans with a leave-me-alone libertarian bent.

“If Tim Walz came back, I bet someone would buy him a beer if they saw him and say, ‘Hey, welcome home, man,’” he said. “People are very accommodating. But they’re not going to give up on their principles to impress somebody.”

Arganbright would not say whom he will be voting for — but said it might be a hint of his party preference that he once interned for Nebraska-born former Vice President Dick Cheney and that one of his young nephews had a show steer named Donald.

With Harris tapping Walz and Trump picking as his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance — whose bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy” chronicled his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia — the race has become, in part, a contest of rural bona fides.

Though the Trump campaign branded Walz “a West Coast wannabe,” Democrats are betting Walz will help them broaden their appeal in overwhelmingly white swaths of rural America, where the party has been trying to claw back voters after two decades of steep losses.

The country’s urban-rural political divide — evident even in California, where conservative northern counties have long talked of seceding to form their own State of Jefferson— has only grown wider since Trump was elected in 2016.

The Niobrara River bridge on the Cowboy Trail, a hiking and biking path along a former railroad track in Valentine.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

For urban Democrats, “it’s as if rural America has become a throwaway, and that lack of interest morphed into enormous resentment after Trump was elected,” said Lisa Pruitt, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law and president-elect of the Rural Sociological Society.

During the 2022 midterm elections, 69% of rural voters cast ballots for Republicans, compared with 29% supporting Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. Among urban voters, 68% supported Democrats and 30% backed Republicans.

Randy Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska Omaha, said he does not see places like Nebraska suddenly going blue.

“What we’re seeing in the polls right now is there’s a little bit of movement toward Harris, but people made hard decisions and they made them a long time ago,” he said.

A building under construction along the newly refurbished Main Street in Valentine.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

Still, there is palpable excitement among rural Democratic organizers, who say they have long been overlooked by their national party.

Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said in an email that Harris “has absolutely expanded the map beyond swing states with Tim Walz” and that “we do not have to hand him a briefing book on rural issues, because he has lived our experiences.”

Among Democrats’ many identity-based Zoom fundraising calls that have raised millions — including “White Dudes for Harris” — was an event last week called “Rural Folks for Harris.” It drew about 6,000 listeners across 48 states and raised $22,000.

In Valentine, there were no visible yard signs for Harris or Trump this week. At the Cherry County Rodeo, people donned cowboy hats, not MAGA caps.

The rodeo clown wondered aloud if one cowboy in a green shirt had actually “gone green” and had an electric pickup truck in the parking lot. It was a wink-wink joke in this far-flung town with no electric vehicle chargers, where such vehicles are seen not only as impractical — it is 130 miles to the nearest Walmart — but as a whiff of liberalism.

Arganbright — whose 7-year-old daughter rode a sheep bareback for just over two seconds in the rodeo’s mutton-bustin’ contest — is amused by the sudden, if fleeting, national interest that Walz’s selection has brought to Valentine. He hopes to use the spotlight to highlight positive things, like the just-finished, multimillion-dollar overhaul of Main Street.

But, he said, there are pressing issues here in vast Cherry County, where the population has dropped nearly 11% since 2000, to roughly 5,500 residents. Residents have struggled with high inflation, job losses as agricultural work becomes more mechanized, and a lack of child care and affordable housing.

As for people’s views of the federal government? One of the best examples, he said, of how “federal policies aren’t taken great locally” is the federally established time zone line, which, until the late 1960s, ran along Main Street, splitting Valentine between Mountain and Central time.

He said it took the government too long to fix it — although some bars are said to have benefited by opening on the west side of town, where they could stay open an hour later.

Bud Pettigrew, with wife Angie at the 2020 Democratic Iowa caucuses, attended Valentine High School with Tim Walz and is a former Nebraska Democratic Party official.

(Melanie Mason / Los Angeles Times)

Bud Pettigrew, who attended Valentine High School with Walz and is a former Nebraska Democratic Party official, said he’s heard mixed reactions in the Cornhusker State to the vice presidential nod.

“The people who are Democrats or open-minded independents are all thrilled about Tim,” said Pettigrew, former Marine and high school teacher. “The MAGA-type Republicans, they don’t care. He’s just another liberal. Once you move away, you don’t count anymore. You hear this a lot from rural people.”

Pettigrew, 63, was a senior when Walz was a freshman quarterback on the junior varsity team. Pettigrew saw in Walz “a pretty tough kid who had some ability.”

Walz’s father was the school superintendent, and Pettigrew remembers him fighting for a school bond — not an easy feat in a fiscally conservative town — to replace the 1897 schoolhouse said to be haunted by the ghost of a student who died after someone poisoned her clarinet reed.

Pettigrew is planning to vote for Harris and Walz.

Darlene Meyer, who owns the Plains Trading Company bookstore on Main Street, said she “was frightened” when she learned Harris was running — not because she dislikes her, but because she figured too many conservatives would refuse to vote for her because she’s a woman, because she’s Black and Asian American, and because she’s from California.

“How many strikes can you have against you?” she said. Walz, she added, was a smart choice.

Meyer is a registered Republican but not a party-line voter. She does not like Trump and said it was frustrating that he politicized masks during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Meyer, a septuagenarian and longtime nurse, still requires masks in the bookstore, a 1914 building with poor ventilation. A few people have spit on the floor in protest. Others boycotted.

Still, Meyer tries to avoid discussing politics.

“There’s plenty else to talk about. The weather. Grasshoppers.”

The quiet main drag in Butte, Neb., where Walz moved with his family when he was a teenager.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

When he was a sophomore, Walz moved with his family 100 miles east to the farm town of Butte to be near relatives after his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. His dad died when he was 19.

Butte, which had a population of around 500 back then, has shrunk to about half that size. Butte High School — from which Walz graduated in 1982 among a class of 25 students — closed years ago. A fading mural downtown reads: “Save the Rural Schools.”

A Trump 2024 flag flies alongside the American flag next to the Butte Community Center.

Walz’s mother, Darlene, still lives in town, and some residents said that while they don’t agree with her son’s politics, they try not to talk about it because they don’t want to hurt her feelings.

Richard Meadows, from left, Dorothy Boes and Francine Meadows are friends of Tim Walz’s mom, Darlene, in Butte, Neb.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

Dorothy Boes, a retired special education teacher who lives just over the South Dakota line, goes to church in Butte and is in a women’s coffee group with Darlene Walz.

Boes does not like the way Trump “talks about and bad-mouths women” and was outraged by the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. She worries about more potential violence.

“I just feel like he’s not going to go quietly into the night if he doesn’t win,” she said.

Boes, 77, does not know much about Walz’s political record. But she knows that he comes back to Butte often to take care of his mom and that he frequently brings her to Minnesota.

“Those are good, positive things, and, in my heart, I feel that he deserves a chance. And so does she,” Boes said of Walz and Harris. Boes is a longtime Republican who voted twice for Trump — but is undecided this year.

Richard Meadows, an 81-year-old “die-hard Democrat” who mows Darlene’s lawn, said he and his wife “coexist” peacefully with their Republican neighbors in Butte.

But Meadows — who has a chest-length white beard and worked for years as a professional St. Nick — knows who’s getting his vote.

“Santa Claus is gonna vote for Tim and Kamala.”

As for Valentine? Its post office gets inundated with packages every February by romantics who want a holiday-themed postmark. But the town is not named for St. Valentine.

It is named for Edward K. Valentine, a Union soldier during the Civil War and a congressman.

He was a Republican.

The Harris campaign has remained mum on when Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a formal press conference, or why she has not held one since she emerged as the Democratic Party’s nominee, while former President Donald Trump prepares to hold his second press conference in a week this afternoon.

Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee on July 21, when President Biden exited the race and passed the torch to Harris through an endorsement. Harris has not held a formal press conference or joined a sit-down interview with the media in the 25 days since Biden endorsed her and she officially clinched the nomination in a subsequent “virtual” roll-call vote less than two weeks later.

Fox News Digital reached out to the campaign this week asking if there were plans to schedule a formal press conference and when, as well as inquiring why the vice president has not held one in more than three weeks. The campaign did not respond to the requests. 

Campaign spokespeople have been pressed about the issue during interviews on news shows, but have also demurred on giving an answer. Instead, both Harris and members of her campaign have said she plans to hold a sit-down interview by the end of August. Details on a date or which outlet will hold the interview have not yet been released. 

KAMALA HARRIS’ GLOWING TIME COVER DRAGGED BY CRITICS: ‘JOURNOS WORSHIPPING POLITICIANS, TERRIFIC’

“I’ve talked to my team, I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” Harris said last week after a campaign event in Michigan. 

The vice president has been criss-crossing the country over the last roughly three weeks as she works to earn support from voters. Biden dropped out of the race amid mounting concerns surrounding his mental acuity and 81 years of age, leaving Harris with just under 100 days to campaign. 

Harris has taken a handful of questions from the media while on the campaign trail, but she has snubbed the media by not holding pressers or sit-down interviews. Time magazine earlier this month published a glowing cover story on Harris, but the vice president didn’t agree to an interview for the piece. Instead, that article quoted aides and allies who lauded Harris as a formidable candidate against former President Donald Trump. 

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (L) and Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz were slammed on social media for sharing a “cringe” video of themselves interviewing each other.  (Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)

Pressure has built on the campaign to hold a press conference, including CNN’s Jim Acosta questioning Harris communications director Michael Tyler this week on air. 

“I’m sure this is not going to be the first time you’ve heard this question, but the Trump campaign is also going after the vice president for not doing enough interviews, for not holding a press conference. Would it kill you guys to have a press conference? Why hasn’t she had a press conference?” Acosta asked. 

25 DAYS: KAMALA HARRIS HAS NOT HELD A PRESS CONFERENCE SINCE EMERGING AS PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE

Tyler said that she and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have been “busy” traveling across the country, citing multiple campaign rallies.

Former President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

“Michael, you know a campaign rally isn’t really a press conference,” Acosta said to Tyler. “Why hasn’t she had a press conference? She’s the vice president, she can handle the questions, why not do it?” 

Tyler said that Harris will hold a press conference at some point and would sit down for an interview with a media outlet by the end of the month. 

The left-leaning Washington Post editorial board also challenged Harris over dodging the media on Sunday, saying of her opponent, “At least he has taken questions.” 

CNN HOST PRESSES HARRIS CAMPAIGN SPOX ON VP’S SCHEDULE AS SHE AVOIDS PRESS: ‘SHE HAS TIME’ FOR AN INTERVIEW

Trump and allies of the 45th president have used Harris’ lack of media availability as a point of attack. 

​​”It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview, and in her case, with a very friendly interview. She’s got all friendly interviewers,” Trump said of Harris Monday evening during his roughly two-hour interview with tech billionaire Elon Musk on X Space. 

Former President Trump said technical issues made his voice sound “somewhat different and strange” during his much-anticipated interview with X owner Elon Musk.  (Getty Images)

Some have said that Harris is pulling a move from Biden’s 2020 playbook, when Biden carried out a cloistered campaign strategy during the pandemic, which earned him the nickname “Basement Joe” from Trump. 

“Kamala Harris should absolutely hold a press conference. One would expect it when she names her vice-presidential pick. But we cannot expect her to break from Biden’s serial avoidance of press conferences,” NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham previously told Fox News Digital.

FORMER CLINTON AIDE PAUL BEGALA DEFENDS HARRIS AVOIDING THE MEDIA: ‘WHO CARES’?

“Since the 2020 campaign, we have witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Donald Trump granting wide access to networks that suggest he’s a fascist and hammer him daily, while Biden and Harris won’t grant interviews to media outlets that gurgle all over them and their ‘historic accomplishments,’” he continued. “Either they think the press can never be servile enough, or they are projecting a complete lack of confidence in their efforts to put complete sentences together.” 

Vice President Kamala Harris called her husband in a fit of rage after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year. (Reuters/Hannah Beier)

Some supporters of the vice president say that her strategy of avoiding the media is a winning one as she continues building out her campaign before the DNC in Chicago next week.  

“Where is it written that you have to sit down for a press interview?” longtime Democratic consultant James Carville told the New York Times. “They’ve had to pick a vice president, plan a convention, move around, do this, do that, and she’s already agreed to a debate.”

Meanwhile, Trump has been more available to the media, holding press conferences at his homes in Florida and New Jersey, in addition to campaigning, and joining a two-hour conversational interview with Musk this week. Musk invited Harris to join him for a similar interview ahead of the election, but the campaign has not said whether Harris will accept.

Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood contributed to this article. 

 Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

California has sharply cut its enforcement of heat-protection laws for outdoor laborers while extreme heat has intensified in recent years — endangering farmworkers, construction workers and others who toil in scorching temperatures — an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and Capital & Main has found.

From 2017 to 2023, the number of field inspections conducted by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, dropped by nearly 30%, according to agency data. The number of violations issued to employers in that period fell by more than 40%.

Worker advocates say the numbers show a failure to adequately enforce California’s landmark outdoor heat-illness law, which was enacted nearly two decades ago after several farmworkers died in San Joaquin Valley fields. The law requires protections such as providing break areas with shade and “pure, suitably cool” water as “close as practicable” to workers when temperatures exceed 80 degrees.

“We just need Cal/OSHA to be out there more often and do more inspections that hopefully will save farmworker lives,” said Ephraim Camacho, a community worker for California Rural Legal Assistance who visits fields in the San Joaquin Valley and helps workers file complaints. “We are constantly getting calls from workers complaining, specifically, about the lack of shade and drinking water.”

In a statement, Cal/OSHA said that its 2023 inspection numbers were an increase over 2021. But the number of inspections in 2023 also dropped by 15% from the year before, according to the data. The agency said it is improving training and investing in automation.

“The department will continue to ramp up these efforts as we aggressively work to increase hiring,” Cal/OSHA said. The agency said it’s creating a new agricultural unit that will operate in cities including Lodi, Salinas, El Centro and Fresno and “significantly expand enforcement.”

With peak temperatures increasingly topping 105 degrees in July and August through much of California’s agricultural heartland, the state has experienced its six warmest years on record since 2014, climate assessments by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show. At least 17 workers have died in heat-related incidents since 2014, according to Cal/OSHA.

The Legislature is considering a bill by Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), a former farmworker, that would promote compliance with the state’s outdoor heat regulations and ensure that workers are compensated and receive medical treatment if they suffer heat-related injuries while working for an employer who had failed to comply with the law. In cases where the farmworkers died, their families would be compensated.

For years, Cal/OSHA has struggled with staffing shortages that critics say have compromised worker safety. As of June 30, the most recent figures available, the agency had a vacancy rate of 37%, or 141 unfilled positions, in its enforcement bureau, which oversees workplace inspections. Earlier this year, lawmakers criticized Cal/OSHA for multiple oversight breakdowns during an Assembly hearing in which farmworkers and their supporters accused the agency of failing repeatedly to enforce workplace protection laws.

Capital & Main — an investigative journalism organization — interviewed more than 40 farmworkers across California in recent months. Workers said they often toil without shade and sometimes without water provided by employers. On other occasions, according to workers, there is not enough shade for all employees, and break areas and water may be hundreds of yards away in sprawling fields, making them impractical to reach during afternoon breaks that often last just 10 minutes.

“All that matters is production,” agricultural worker Nazario Sarmiento, 37, said in Spanish. He added that for years he has picked lemons, oranges and grapefruit in San Joaquin Valley orchards without shade and at times with no water provided by employers.

A reporter surveyed agricultural fields in seven California counties this spring and summer and saw workers laboring without shade, including in a grape field on a 108-degree day in Kern County, in citrus orchards on a 99-degree day in Tulare County, in a pepper field on a 91-degree day in San Benito County and in tomato fields on an 89-degree day in Contra Costa County.

In interviews, worker advocates said they have also visited fields that lacked shade, or where water and shade were located hundreds of yards away.

“I won’t say it’s every farm. … But I will say that there is negligence when it comes to protecting the workers, whether they’re hired directly by the farm or they’re hired through a contractor that the farm hires,” said Marivel Mendoza, executive director of Hijas del Campo, which hands out food, water and protective equipment to workers in the fields of Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties.

Workers said they do not complain or file complaints for fear of being targeted by supervisors. “They will say you’re not doing your work and fire you,” a 36-year-old strawberry picker in the Santa Maria Valley said in Spanish.

Since May, the California Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees Cal/OSHA, has refused multiple requests from Capital & Main for detailed breakdowns on outdoor heat-safety inspections, including enforcement actions by industry and region, claiming the records cannot be disclosed due to “privilege.”

A farmworker holds a water bottle containing a chunk of ice while working in a peach orchard in August 2023.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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Still, the data in the agency’s 2023 annual report show a steady decline in the overall number of enforcement actions during the six-year period.

In 2017, Cal/OSHA inspectors conducted 4,150 outdoor heat-safety inspections and cited employers for 1,996 violations. In 2023, the agency recorded 2,929 inspections and 1,130 violations.

The report noted the importance of outreach efforts to increase awareness about heat-illness prevention regulations and safety measures. Outreach includes educational materials for employers and workers and communications to vulnerable communities. Yet between 2017 and 2023, the number of outreach efforts dropped by 83%, from 1,805 to 308, the report shows.

In 2005, California became the first state in the nation to enact outdoor heat safety regulations.

The outdoor heat law applies to the agricultural, construction, landscaping and oil and gas extraction industries, as well as to certain transportation activities. Employers are required to provide heat illness training and have a written safety plan in English and the language understood by a majority of their workers.

For farmworkers, employers are required to take additional “high-heat” measures when temperatures reach 95 degrees. These include 10-minute “cool down” breaks every two hours and additional breaks while working overtime.

A recent study by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center estimated that 59% of agricultural workers in California were not citizens, the highest percentage of any industry in the state. Many of those farmworkers face language, technological or other barriers to filing complaints, while others are hesitant to speak out because of their immigration status, according to worker advocates. These barriers, advocates say, make it especially critical that Cal/OSHA ramp up enforcement operations.

“These are long-standing issues that have been ignored for far too long,” said Irene De Barraicua, director of policy and communications for Líderes Campesinas, a statewide organization that advocates for women who work in the fields and their families. She said Cal/OSHA needs to leverage its limited resources by partnering with community-based organizations that have the trust of workers and can help conduct outreach.

“If you don’t have these inspectors, or it’s not happening quick enough,” she said, “then there should be more of an official collaboration with community-based organizations that are out there on the ground.”

This story was produced in partnership with Capital & Main, the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.