‘He doesn’t come off as scary’: Walz makes his mark in Wisconsin

EAU CLAIRE, Wisconsin — Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign wasted no time testing the Midwestern appeal of Tim Walz, holding a raucous rally Wednesday at a Wisconsin county fairgrounds surrounded by corn fields just across the river from his home state.

The reception seemed strong — based on the traffic alone.

Harris and Walz spoke to a crowd estimated at 12,000 people in Eau Claire, where people waited in a line that stretched for nearly two miles for a chance to hear from a Democratic ticket that quickly got a fundraising boost after the Minnesota governor was added to the ticket. Hundreds of people ditched their cars in Wisconsin farmland and walked the final mile to hear Harris and Walz speak.

From the stage, Walz reminded the state’s “Packers and Badgers fans” that he coached his high school football team to a state championship and bragged that he was the “top gun at the trap shoot three years in a row” when he served in Congress.

He argued that being Midwestern meant “car[ing] for your neighbors, kindness,” while representing a “red district” in Congress meant he “learned how to compromise without compromising my values.”

It was all but a hometown rally for Walz, whose Minnesota media markets spill over into rural Wisconsin. And it was the first major test of the bet that Harris is putting on her running mate — that he can appeal to the kind of white, working-class voters critical in the Midwest and in the Rust Belt.

“Selecting Walz is a signal that she and the campaign think she can be competitive enough in rural, small-town areas, and her path to 270 still does cut through the Rust Belt,” said Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster who specializes in rural voters. “It also sends an important message about Harris, how she wants to round out her ticket … She picked a white guy governor from the Midwest who can go into small towns in the Midwest and help her with those voters.”

McCrary said, “He’s more Friday Night Lights than White Lotus, so that’s an important signal.”

The Harris campaign has argued it has multiple paths to 270 electoral votes that cut through not only Blue Wall states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — which Biden had been counting on for victory in November — but also Sun Belt states to the south. Early polling suggests the map may, in fact, be that open, with the vice president gaining ground over Biden in the Sun Belt and holding her own in Wisconsin.

A Marquette University Law School poll, released Wednesday, put Harris 1 percentage point ahead of former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin, well within the margin of error. That’s similar to the university’s June poll, prior to Biden's disastrous debate in Atlanta, when the president was 2 points ahead of Trump.

In a recent memo, the Harris campaign said that it has more than 600 coordinated staff on the ground in Blue Wall states, with plans to add another 150 staffers in the first two weeks of August. In Wisconsin, the campaign has 48 coordinated offices across 43 counties — including 32 that Trump won in 2020 and 13 that he won by more than 20 points.

But there is, in Wisconsin, still a lot of red. And Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director, acknowledged in the memo that the campaign must narrow margins in rural portions of the state to win.

“Democrats can’t get blown out in the rural areas,” if they want to win statewide, said former Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat who represented a western Wisconsin district for more than two decades before he retired in 2022. “We can still win in these places, but you need the right candidate, the right messenger, and Tim was able to do that in southern Minnesota, too.”

During his first congressional race in 2006, Walz won a rural, red-leaning district with 53 percent of the vote. And his appearance here reflected an effort to appeal to that same kind of electorate. On Tuesday, the Harris campaign started selling camo-colored baseball caps with “Harris Walz” in orange lettering. And while Walz stressed his support for “common sense” gun laws, he also discussed his support for the Second Amendment. Walz, an Army veteran and avid hunter, was once backed by the NRA with an “A” rating, before he was downgraded to an “F” for supporting restrictions on guns, including an assault weapons ban.

“Tim brings the ability to engage with [rural] voters because they’re like, ‘yeah, that guy goes to my church,’” said Wisconsin state Rep. Jodi Emerson, who represents parts of Eau Claire in the state legislature. “He’s a regular guy, and I think that will appeal to people around the country, but certainly in the Midwest.”

Walz’s folksy demeanor, which the campaign hopes will be an asset particularly in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, was on full display Wednesday, at a rally where Bon Iver also performed. The former teacher and football coach appealed to rally goers to embrace shared values of “generosity” and a “commitment to people,” while also respecting others’ decisions and minding “your own damn business,” a nod to Harris’ freedom-focused campaign rhetoric.

It’s unclear how effectively Walz will be able to cast himself as a Midwestern moderate, given his more progressive record as a governor, and as the Trump campaign races to brand him as a “radical leftist.” And even if Walz is successful, Republicans here are skeptical of the effect he will have on Harris’ prospects.

“I don’t think either JD Vance or Tim Walz is going to have a massive impact on who ultimately wins this election,” said Mark Graul, a Republican consultant based in Wisconsin.

Or as Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio talk show host in Wisconsin who is now anti-Trump, put it: “If you’re a rural white voter going to the polls and [you’re] uncomfortable with Kamala Harris, [you’re] not going to vote for her because of Tim Walz.”

However, Sykes argued that because “Trump is going to win the rural, white vote,” then “if you can just hold it down by a few points, then that changes things.”

“Wisconsinites look at [Walz] and say, ‘I know that guy,’” Sykes said. “He doesn’t come off as scary. He doesn’t speak like a coastal elite. If there’s anywhere where he really has an impact on the race, electorally, it’s going to be in places like western Wisconsin.”

At the rally on Wednesday, that’s exactly what Jan Porath, a 50-year-old from Eau Claire, said she sees in Walz.

“I think my neighbors can see themselves in him. He’s a school teacher, a football coach, that’s relatable here,” said Porath, who said the event was her first political rally.

And, at the very least, the Minnesota governor knows how to say “Eau Claire.”

“Isn’t it good to have a candidate who can pronounce the name correctly?” Walz quipped.