Democrats hope ‘happy warrior’ Walz maintains youth enthusiasm

PHILADELPHIA — Most young voters didn’t know who Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was less than a week ago.

But those who went to the freshly minted vice presidential candidate’s first campaign event Tuesday in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania already liked what they were hearing and seeing about him online.

Walz, a 60-year-old former teacher in his second gubernatorial term, enters with little national profile, and Republicans are racing to define him as a liberal boogeyman. But Democrats are hoping his aura and record on issues that matter to young people will help the party engage its base and prevent young voters from slipping to former President Donald Trump.

“It’s fun — it’s not scary,” said Debbie Medina, 31, who traveled to the rally from New York with two friends. She praised Walz’s “happy warrior” attitude and “unapologetically proud” messaging as the right complement to Vice President Kamala Harris’ strengths.

“I think something wrong with the Democratic Party is that they use fear tactics to get you to the vote. And for the first time, we’re seeing someone have fun with it,” Medina said.

Harris introduced her vice president as her campaign looks to maintain its momentum with young voters, many of whom appeared to have soured on President Joe Biden before his withdrawal last month.

At the first rally since Walz joined the ticket, attendees’ outfits captured the campy, meme-able energy that both Harris — and now Walz — seem to have captured among many young voters (and some older). One attendee donned a bright green T-shirt with the text “Kamala is brat,” a nod to pop star Charli XCX’s summer album sensation.

A new, unofficial campaign slogan has reached the voting rank-and-file: “We are not going back.”

In the line to get into the rally, there was plenty of evidence that Harris has energized a particularly online and young group of voters. And, in a sign of how Walz has followed Harris’ social media-dominant footsteps, many readily named some of his accomplishments as governor — ranging from free school meals for school children to the legalization of recreational marijuana.

Dru McIver-Jenkins, a rising senior at Temple University in Philadelphia, where the rally took place, echoed Walz’s recent use of the word “weird” to describe comments about women and other issues from Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.

While those attendees may represent the most engaged young voters, Democrats have work to do in marketing Walz more broadly. A poll of young voters conducted days before Walz was announced as Harris’ choice found that 76 percent had no opinion of the Minnesota governor or had not heard of him. That result, from a survey of 1,044 likely voters between the ages of 18 and 30 conducted on behalf of Investing In US, a political group linked to Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, is largely in line with other recent surveys of voters of all ages.

“The vast majority of young voters don’t know Tim Walz yet, and the Harris campaign has an exciting opportunity to introduce him,” said Max Lubin of Kismet Research, who ran the poll for Investing In US.

He suggested Walz’s “Midwestern patriotism” could also boost the ticket among young men. Vance, the same poll found, was significantly underwater with both young men and women.

The relatively clean slate for Walz would have been the case for anyone on Harris’ vice presidential shortlist, although the Minnesota governor — who registered at 13 percent favorable in the survey compared to 11 percent unfavorable — may have more upside than others considered by the vice president. The same survey found Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who faced criticism for his response to pro-Palestinian campus protests this spring, was slightly underwater with young voters.

Nora Spurrier, 19, who attended the Philadelphia rally with her 24-year-old sister, Grace, is from Shapiro’s hometown of Abington in the Philadelphia suburbs. While the pair knew the Pennsylvania governor well from the town’s annual July 4 parade, they both found themselves energized by Walz’s record of progressive accomplishments in Minnesota.

“Just the way he talks, the way he’s been in public: very direct, a little funny,” Nora Spurrier said, when asked what made Walz stand out to her. “He’s just respectable and sensible.”

With Walz’s sense of humor, Grace Spurrier added, a vice presidential debate with Vance might end up more “like a Comedy Central roast.”

It’s still too early to judge Walz’s impact on youth enthusiasm more broadly, said Kelly Siegel-Stechler, a youth civic life researcher at Tufts University. But she expected Walz’s record to mesh well with young voters’ priorities — particularly with young LGBTQ+ voters, a group Tufts research finds is twice as likely to post videos and memes about politics online than their straight counterparts.

“Youth tend to be issue-based voters,” Siegel-Stechler said. “That may end up being a real boon to the campaign.”