US Vice-President Kamala Harris has picked Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota to be her running mate in the US presidential election, Associated Press and other US media outlets reported on Tuesday, settling the top of the Democratic ticket just two weeks before the party’s national convention.
Walz is scheduled to campaign with Harris in coming days in each of the seven most competitive states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada – starting with a first appearance later on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
Walz, in his second term as governor of the midwestern state of Minnesota, has been a teacher, high school football coach, member of Congress, and a high-ranking member of the National Guard, a background that fits more comfortably with American conservatives.
Some of Walz’s teaching experience includes China, according to a report in BestColleges.
Walz graduated from Chadron State College, in Nebraska, another midwestern state, with a bachelor’s degree in social science education, according to that report.
He taught high school in China through a programme affiliated with Harvard University, and also served as a visiting fellow of international relations at the Macau Polytechnic University, in Macau, China, it added.
The pick shows that the Harris team was looking to strengthen the Democratic ticket in Midwestern states, which have been key election battlegrounds in recent elections. According to AP, a team of lawyers and political operatives led by former US attorney general Eric Holder conducted interviews with potential vice presidential selections.
Other candidates included Mark Kelly, a former Nasa astronaut and Navy captain as well as a popular senator from Arizona, a crucial swing state; Josh Shapiro, a first-term governor in Pennsylvania, an election swing-state battleground where he won by nearly 15 percentage points in 2022; and US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020.
Walz, 60, recently called Vance and his allies “weird,” a descriptor that Harris and other party leaders have also used effectively to vilify some of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s positions, including Vance’s opposition to abortion and his dismissive assessment of “childless cat ladies” who were prominent in Democratic circles.
Since one job a vice-presidential candidate has traditionally held in US politics is to be a sharp critic of the opposing ticket, his effectiveness during interviews on cable news shows helped bring him to the Harris campaign’s attention.
Harris, who last week secured enough votes from Democratic delegates to become the party’s presidential nominee, will face Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who have struggled to respond to strong support for Harris since President Joe Biden announced last month that he was withdrawing from the campaign and threw his support behind his vice-president.
Harris is the first woman of colour at the top of a major party’s ticket, a possible liability in the Democratic Party’s efforts to win over conservative voters, and a key reason that she had been expected to choose a white man as her running mate.
Republicans have also labelled Harris a “California liberal”, giving her more reason to choose someone from a Republican-leaning or swing state to join her.
It remains to be seen whether Walz gives Harris more momentum in polls, which have shown her roughly even with Trump, and in some cases slightly ahead.
Trump’s pick of Vance has been widely seen as dragging the former president’s standing in the polls, giving rise to talk that he may switch to another running mate.
The latest polling averages compiled by 538.com show Vance with an unfavourable rating of 39.6 per cent, and a favourable rating of 31.3 per cent, numbers that have steadily moved against him since Trump made his selection.
