Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate will hold a rally in Arizona as part of their tour of electoral battlegrounds, visiting a state where Harris passed over a prominent Democrat in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate, had been a top contender for running mate.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump is visiting Montana for a rally in support of Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy. The former president hopes to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp insists he’s not getting bogged down by Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump’s intraparty attacks over Kemp’s refusal to help overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Republican governor called Trump’s recent broadsides at an Atlanta campaign rally and on the Truth Social platform “a lot of noise” and jokingly compared Trump to a tropical storm.

“This big storm came through the state this week – and now we’re dealing with Tropical Storm Debby,” Kemp said at conservative radio host Erick Erickson’s annual conference, “The Gathering,” in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.

Kemp repeated his pledge to support the GOP nominee and renewed his warnings that Republicans should stop focusing on the 2020 election and false assertions that Biden won Georgia and nationally because of fraud.

“We’re going to use our political operation to win Georgia despite past grievances,” Kemp told Erickson, adding that the efforts would “help Republicans up and down the ticket.”

Of course, Kemp’s political operation is focusing on competitive Georgia legislative districts that are key to maintaining GOP majorities at the statehouse, meaning potential Republican voters in other swaths of the hotly contested state may not be reached by the Kemp organization before November.

Throughout the discussion with Erickson, Kemp did not say Trump’s name.

For a brief moment this week, the fierce competition for swing voters in swing-state Wisconsin converged on the tarmac of the tiny Chippewa Valley Regional Airport.

Minutes after Vice President Kamala Harris landed with her new running mate Tim Walz for their first campaign stop in the state, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance arrived. He walked across the tarmac to check out Air Force Two, just missing Harris.

The close encounter of the political kind could be written off as a coincidence if it happened anywhere other than Wisconsin, one of a small number of states that will not only determine the winner of the presidential race but could also shape the balance of power in Congress. But it sent a much louder signal that both parties understand the importance of a region that could tip the balance of power in more ways than one.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate will hold a rally in Arizona on Friday as part of their tour of electoral battlegrounds, visiting a state where Harris passed over a prominent Democrat in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate, had been a top contender for running mate. He’s won two tough races in politically divided Arizona.

In passing over Kelly, Harris may have also lost the chance to win over people like Gonzalo Leyva, a 49-year-old landscaper in Phoenix. Leyva plans to vote for former President Donald Trump, a Republican, but says he would have backed a Harris-Kelly ticket.

“I prefer Kelly like 100 times,” said Leyva, a lifelong Democrat who became an independent at the beginning of Trump’s term in office. “I don’t think he’s that extreme like the other guys.”

With control of the Senate potentially at stake, Donald Trump is visiting Montana on Friday hoping to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

Tester has tried to convince voters he’s aligned with Trump on many issues, mirroring his successful strategy from six years ago. While that worked in a non-presidential election year, it faces a more critical test this fall with Tester’s opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, trying to link the three-term incumbent to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

If Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are elected this fall, not only would a woman of color lead the country for the first time, but a Native woman also would govern a state for the first time in U.S. history.

Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and a citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, is poised to serve as the state’s next governor should Walz step down to accept the role of U.S. vice president. Her rise to power has been watched closely by Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and across the country who see her as a champion of policies that positively affect Native Americans.

Posted August 8, 2024 9:18pm MST

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz knocks Republicans for being “weird.” Can he win over Arizona men by being “normal?” 

Vice President Kamala Harris’s brand new running mate is coming to Arizona, and political watchers here say he could draw independent male voters into her coalition if he can follow the playbook of another Democrat Harris considered for the post: Sen. Mark Kelly. 

The 60-year-old Walz was relatively unknown outside of his home state of Minnesota until this week. Now, he has three months to introduce himself on the biggest stage in politics — and avoid being shoved into a political box. 

“What has underwritten the success of Mark Kelly in Arizona, it’s the same basic thing that I think is going to underwrite the success of Walz in Arizona,” said David Waid, former executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party. “He is a Democrat who breaks the mold, who breaks the expectations and can’t be put neatly into a box.” 

Since she took over the top of the ticket last month, Harris has made up much of the ground that President Joe Biden had lost to former President Donald Trump in the years since the 2020 election. The race has narrowed, public polling shows, and the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan group that forecasts elections, this week moved Arizona from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.” 

A new survey from the Arizona polling firm HighGround found Harris narrowly leading Trump in Arizona 44% to 42% among likely voters. She has a 15 percentage point lead among female voters, but Trump has a 10 percentage point lead with men. The survey was conducted July 30-Aug. 5 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.38 percentage points.

Walz certainly “will not hurt her with men,” said Chuck Coughlin, the president and CEO of HighGround and a longtime Republican strategist who left the party in the Trump era. The campaign also has a number of issues to clarify to voters during the Democratic National Convention later this month, he added. 

“As the survey shows, she is struggling with men in general,” Coughlin said. “Having a strong and confident response on immigration and articulating a strong and confident position on Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan will help her with men. But most importantly, being clear-eyed about economic policies, tax cuts vs. deficit concerns will help her.” 

If Walz can play up his working class and pro-union bona fides, his background as a teacher and his perspective as a hunter who understands gun rights, he could tap into what helped Kelly win back-to-back races in 2020 and 2022, Waid said. Walz showed he could win over Republicans when he flipped a red district during his first race for Congress in 2006. 

“He’s going to be appealing to white men independents. I think he’s a perfect fit for that, and that is a very large voting block in Arizona,” Waid said. “This is something that can really begin to put some space between her and Trump, this VP choice.” 

So far, Walz has received a warm reception from Arizona Democrats who have won statewide in recent years. Kelly said Walz and Harris are “building a campaign to unite our country” and Gov. Katie Hobbs said she is “absolutely thrilled” and even let out a scream when she heard the news. Rep. Greg Stanton, who called for Biden to step aside weeks ago, will attend the Harris-Walz rally in Phoenix on Friday.

But the Trump campaign is already working to cast Walz as “dangerously liberal,” playing up progressive initiatives he’s supported as governor. Trump’s team pointed to Walz’s support of stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, cast doubt on his respect for rural America and tied him to Harris’s native California.

Trump, who is a convicted felon, also attacked Walz for “embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote” in Minnesota. 

“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 written 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.” 

Some Republicans aren’t buying it. Sam Campana, the first woman mayor of Scottsdale and a lifelong member of the GOP, recently joined a group of Republicans backing Harris and Walz over Trump and Vance. She said that voters have outgrown those labels that the two parties fling at each other, such as “flaming liberal” and “ultra-conservative.”

“You can’t just listen to these labels anymore,” Campana said. “When you give them the biggest tax cut they’ve ever had, that doesn’t sound like a flaming liberal to me. You know, that sounds like somebody who really is listening and caring about their constituents.” 

But other aspects of Walz’s record could hurt him with Arizona voters. Chad Heywood, the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, said Walz’s early campaign moves have been “great at making him a likable, common guy introducing himself.” 

“That being said, his positions are very progressive, and I think a lot of the soft Republicans and moderate independent voters won’t appreciate his more liberal positions on controversial issues like gender-affirming care for minors, abortion, marijuana legalization,” Heywood said. “Probably a missed opportunity for the Harris ticket to have reached undecided moderate voters.” 

Harris has been on defense when it comes to immigration, a top issue for Arizona voters. Democrats who have won statewide race in Arizona are often more conservative on the issue than their party is nationally, and Republicans killed a bipartisan immigration bill in Congress earlier this year to avoid handing Democrats an election year victory on the issue. 

Walz took a progressive track on immigration as Minnesota governor, namely expanding some state services to undocumented residents. Minnesota expanded drivers’ licenses to all Minnesota residents last year, regardless of their immigration status. The initiative was expected to benefit approximately 81,000 undocumented immigrants in the state, and 20 other states and territories do the same. 

What does Walz bring to the Democratic ticket in Arizona?

What a vice presidential candidate can actually bring to the ticket is an often debated issue in politics. Even former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have said they expect Vance to have little impact on the race. Vance had a rocky start to his role as Trump’s second-in-command, but tried to hit the reset button during a trip to Arizona last week. 

Harris and Walz balance one another, Campana said, noting that Harris is a woman with a diverse background: her mother was Indian and her father is Jamaican. Walz will let Harris take center stage as the presidential candidate and “work hard in the background,” she said, the way that Harris did for Biden and Biden did for former President Barack Obama.

Both vice presidential candidates are “bringing a vibe to the ticket,” Waid said. Vance balances Trump’s septuagenarian status and speaks to the former president’s base, for example. 

“Vance brings a, let’s call it a ‘Young MAGA’ vibe,” Waid said. And for Walz: “It’s more of what I think most Americans know as a ‘Normal Joe.’”