‘It’s a fight for the future’ • Maine Morning Star

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appeared together in Philadelphia Tuesday at a rally on Temple University’s campus, the first time she has visited Pennsylvania as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for president. It’s been less than a month since Harris’ last visit to the City of Brotherly Love, but in that time she’s gone from being President Joe Biden’s running mate to leading at the top of the ticket.

The speculation about Harris’ running mate reached a fever pitch on Monday, with observers looking for any clue about who her pick would be. On Tuesday morning, she ended the guessing, announcing she had chosen Walz.

The running mates took the stage at the Liacouras Center to raucous applause from the full arena, with “Freedom” by Beyonce playing.

“We are the underdogs in this race. But we have the momentum, and I know exactly what we are up against,” Harris said. She said in her past roles as a prosecutor and senator she “took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who scammed consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.”

But her campaign is not just a fight against Trump, Harris added, “It’s a fight for the future.”

Harris described Walz’s career path as a teacher and high school football coach, taking a winless team to a state championship. He also championed students who were struggling with acceptance, she added, becoming the faculty advisor for students who wanted to start a support group for LGBTQ students.

“Tim knew the signal that it would send to have a football coach get involved,” Harris said. “Tim Walz was the kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having, and that every kid deserves that kind of coach, because he’s the kind of person who makes people feel like they belong, and then inspires them to dream big. And that’s the kind of vice president he will be.”

When Walz took the stage, he began by praising Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was also a finalist for the VP role.

“He can bring the fire. This is a visionary leader,” Walz said. “Also, I have to tell you, everybody in America knows when you need a bridge fixed call that guy,” in an apparent reference to Shapiro’s work to get a section of Interstate 95 reopened in 12 days after it was damaged in a fiery crash in 2023.

He thanked Harris for bringing back the “joy” to the race for the White House.

Walz touched on several issues that illustrated his record as a lawmaker. He said he was old enough to remember “when it was Republicans who were talking about freedom. It turns out now, what they meant was the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make, even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves.”

Kamala Harris officially becomes the Democratic presidential nominee

He also spoke about the challenges he and his wife Gwen had using in-vitro fertilization to start their family. “We spent years going through infertility treatments, and I remember praying every night for a call for good news, the pit in my stomach when the phone rang and the agony when we heard that the treatments hadn’t worked,” Walz said. “So it wasn’t by chance that when we welcomed our daughter into the world, we named her Hope.

When the vice president and I talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make your own health care decisions, and for our children to be free to go to school without worrying they’ll be shot dead in their classrooms,” Walz added.

Walz next turned his focus on GOP vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, mocking his oft-told origin story of growing up in rural Ohio.

“Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best seller trashing that community,” Walz said. “Come on, that’s not what Middle America is. And I gotta tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy — that is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

The Harris campaign said there were 14,000 people at Temple either watching the rally at the Liacouras Center, or in an overflow room at nearby McGonigle Hall.

Shapiro warmed up the crowd before Harris and Walz took the stage. The fired-up audience began a chant of “he’s a weirdo” when he mentioned Vance, a call-back to comments Walz made and that the Harris campaign has run with, branding Trump and Vance as “weird.”

“I love you, Philly. And you know, what else I love? I love being your Governor,” Shapiro said. “I want you to know I am going to continue to pour my heart and soul into serving you every single day as your governor, and I’m going to be working my tail off to make sure we make Kamala Harris and Tim Walz the next leaders of the United States of America.”

If Shapiro was disappointed to not get the VP nod, however, he did not show it, thanking the audience and praising the Democratic ticket.

“Let me tell you about my friend, Kamala Harris, someone I’ve been friends with for two decades,” Shapiro said. “She is courtroom tough. She has a big heart, and she is battle tested and ready to go. Whether in a courtroom, whether fighting as attorney general, whether remembering the people who have oftentimes been left behind when she was sitting in the halls of power in the Senate, Kamala Harris has always understood that you got to be, every day, for the people.”

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign released a statement shortly after the Walz news was announced Tuesday. “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 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.”

Walz gets positive response

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-4th District) said after the rally that she had been pulling for Shapiro to get the VP nod, but was impressed with Harris’ pick. “I was a hometown girl for Josh, but I think this is a terrific combination and Josh will be right by their side, lifting up this ticket,” Dean said. “This is a ticket that believes in the American values of small d, democracy, rule of law and freedom. It couldn’t be a greater contrast, so this was spectacular.”

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, the city’s 100th mayor and the first Black woman to hold the position, was the first local elected official to speak at the rally on Tuesday.

“I need you to know that this is a history-making day here in Philadelphia and in our country because we are on the cusp of electing our Vice President Kamala Harris to be the 47th president of the United States of America,” Harris said, to big applause.

Parker praised Harris’ record as vice president and noted they are both “divine nine sisters and graduates of Historically Black colleges and universities.”

Maine Democratic leaders say Tim Walz ‘shares our commonsense values’

Parker warned about staying focused on the race.

“Don’t let Trump the trickster take our eyes off the prize,” Parker said. “We have to remember that there is nothing that is more important than electing the Harris-Walz team and taking them where they belong, to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.”

Carlos Ruiz III of Philadelphia told the Capital-Star that prior to the rally his first choice for vice president was Shapiro, but after doing some research on Walz, he liked what he read and is happy with the pick.

“I think one of the, one of the groups of voters that she was probably going to have a hard time connecting with was older white voters, and I think that’s probably why she leaned towards Gov. Walz” Ruiz said. “And he’s very relatable, seems like the everyday kind of guy, and I think that’s going to bring what was missing to the ticket.”

Jane Poblano, a teacher from Montgomery County, told the Capital-Star that Walz seems like a “great guy, very humble,” and offered words of encouragement to him joining the ticket.

“I think it’s a good choice,” Poblano said. “She had a lot of good choices.”

How it started/ How it’s going

The month of July began with Biden trailing in the polls after a poor debate performance in late June raised concerns about whether he could beat GOP nominee Donald Trump. Two days before the Republican National Convention, a gunman shot at Trump during a rally in Butler, killing one rally-goer and injuring two others. The following weekend, Biden bowed out of the race and immediately endorsed Harris, with Democrats quickly coalescing behind her candidacy.

Late Monday, the Democratic National Committee announced Harris had secured the support of 99% of delegates to formally become the party’s presidential nominee, following the conclusion of a five-day virtual vote.  She is expected to formally accept the nomination at the Democratic National Convention later this month.

The Biden-Harris campaign raised $284.1 million between January 2023 and June 30, 2024,  while Trump’s campaign raised $217.2 million during that time period. Trump entered July with $128.1 million on hand, while Biden’s campaign had $96 million on hand.

But Harris raised $310 million in July according to her campaign, while Trump’s campaign said it raised $138 million.

And although the election is still less than three months away, Pennsylvanians are already being inundated with ads and will continue to be throughout the campaign. AdImpact data showed that Trump and Harris are slated to spend more than twice as much on advertising in Pennsylvania as any of the other pivotal battleground states.

Another race in the commonwealth garnering  a lot off ad spending is Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s bid for a fourth term against Republican challenger Dave McCormick.

At the rally on Tuesday, Casey praised Harris’ record “as a prosecutor putting away dangerous criminals, to her time in the United States Senate and as vice president, fighting for women’s rights, voting rights, and workers rights.”

He also told the crowd that they couldn’t trust McCormick, referencing his recent previous residency in Connecticut and work as a hedge fund manager.

McCormick, who was also in Philadelphia on Tuesday, sent out a statement earlier in the day calling Harris-Walz the “most liberal presidential ticket in history” and linked them with Casey  on border policies, inflation, energy production, and other issues.

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), delivered brief remarks at the rally on Tuesday noting that he’s a “yinzer,” Steelers and Sheetz guy, referencing his roots on the opposite side of the commonwealth — which drew boos from the crowd — he said they were all on team Harris/Walz, which drew applause.

“This election is about moving our country forward with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz,” Fetterman said. “Or a couple of really really really really weird dudes.”

After Fetterman exited the stage, some “E-A-G-L-E-S” chants broke out.

While most of the state’s delegation backed Shapiro to join the ticket, Fetterman had reportedly voiced concerns about having him in the role.

Prior to Biden’s exit from the race, Trump was consistently polling slightly ahead of Biden in Pennsylvania. However, since Harris emerged as the presumptive nominee, some polling shows the race in a statistical tie.

“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle class families run deep. It’s personal,” Harris said in a statement  Tuesday, offering praise for Walz’s record as governor, including passing a law to provide paid family and medical leave and making Minnesota the first state in the country to pass a law providing constitutional abortion protections, and  a bill requiring universal background checks for gun purchases.

Tuesday is Harris’ seventh visit to Pennsylvania this year, according to the campaign. Her most recent appearance in the commonwealth was on July 13 in Philadelphia to court Asian-American voters. She’s also campaigned this cycle in Pittsburgh to tout the administration’s infrastructure investments, in Philadelphia to talk student debt with educators, and in Montgomery County to speak in support of reproductive rights. Harris has been the Biden administration’s primary voice on abortion rights, particularly in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

And in case anyone doubted Philadelphia’s importance in the 2024 race, Vance was in Philadelphia on Tuesday as well, for his first campaign event in Pennsylvania.

Trump was most recently in the state last Wednesday for an indoor rally in Harrisburg, his first campaign stop in the Keystone State since the assassination attempt.

Harris’s campaign swing with her running mate begins in Pennsylvania, then she’s scheduled to campaign in other key battleground states over the next few days. Planned campaign stops in Georgia and North Carolina were postponed due to Hurricane Debby.

Trump and Vance are also slated to make appearances in key battleground states later this week.

This story was originally published by Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Like Maine Morning Star, Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: [email protected]. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and X.