Kamala Harris and Tim Walz barnstormed through the Midwest battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday as they sought to ride a wave of momentum that has dramatically upended the presidential race.
Fresh off the well-received debut of Walz, the Democratic ticket headed to the heartland to build on the surge that has catapulted Harris into a virtual dead heat with former President Trump with just 90 days to go before Election Day.
“Coach Walz and i know that when America’s middle class is strong, America is strong,” Harris told a sprawling crowd in Eau Claire, Wisc. “The promise of America is what makes it possible for Governor Walz and me to stand here together. Only in America.”
She attacked Trump for the right-wing Project 2025, which she called a blueprint for a second Trump term: “We’re not going back,” she declared.
Harris shushed the sprawling crowd when they started chanting “lock him up” about Trump.
“The courts are gonna take care of that part,” Harris said. “We’re going to beat him in November,”
Walz, a folksy former teacher and football coach, grew up in rural Nebraska and is expected to play a key role in taking the Democratic message to small towns and cities across middle America.
After repeating his signature jibe at Republicans to “mind your own business,” Walz pumped up Harris as a leader for all Americans.
“Kamala Harris wants to take us forward to a future where everyone matters,” Walz said.
Walz’s small-town upbringing in the Great Plains strikes an evocative contrast with the inspirational run of Harris to become the first Black woman president.
Democrats hope the combo package can seal the deal in the so-called blue wall states that Trump flipped to the GOP column in 2016, but swung back to President Biden and Harris in 2020.
In the first 24 hours since Walz was unveiled, the Harris campaign says it raised an impressive $36 million from individual donors, building an advantage over Trump and the GOP.
Harris can likely reach 270 electoral votes to win the White House if the ticket sweeps all three states, including Pennsylvania, where Walz made a great impression on an overflow crowd of 10,000 supporters in North Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Biden won the perennial swing state by just 20,000 votes, meaning the Democrats need to win small cities like Eau Claire as well as running up the score in the cities of Milwaukee and deep-blue Madison.
The newly minted ticket later heads to Detroit later, where Democrats are hoping Harris’s bid for history can mobilize legions of Black and Latino voters who may have been sitting on the sidelines when the 81-year-old Biden was bidding for four more years.
Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the NAACP Detroit branch, said the excitement over Harris is “mind-blowing.” He likened it to Barack Obama’s first run for president in 2008, when voters waited in long lines to help elect the nation’s first Black president.
The trip aims to rebuild the traditional Democratic coalition of labor, youth and people of color that tipped the scales for Biden in 2020. That coalition showed signs of fraying, especially in Michigan, where anger over Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza has run high in the state’s large Arab-American community.
The nation’s largest auto workers’ union, the United Auto Workers, is signaling it will strongly back Harris, especially now that Walz is her No. 2. UAW President Shawn Fain praised Walz for standing “with the working class every step of the way.”
Trump’s vice presidential nominee JD Vance is shadowing Harris and Walz as the tour the swing states that will likely determine the winner of the fall election.
After Michigan, the campaign focus will shift to the Sun Belt battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, where Trump is thought to hold narrow leads. Planned rallies in Georgia and North Carolina are in limbo due to the extensive flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Debby.
Vance, who suffered a rocky roll out after Trump picked him last month, is seeking to settle into the traditional veep’s role of attacking the opposing ticket instead of defending his own record of off-beat statements.
He even took a peek at Air Force Two on the tarmac of the airport in Eau Claire, saying he planned to be riding in it after winning the election with Trump.
“We’ve got to throw Kamala Harris out of office, not give her a promotion,” Vance said.
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