Expect more of Tim Walz this fall — in orange. Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will be wearing a bright vest and toting a rifle while pheasant hunting. That’s when he’s not wearing tacky flannel shirts, talking about cleaning out his gutters or singing, “Save big money at Menards.”
EveryDad’s image, complemented by his nickname, “Coach Walz,” is an unmistakable signal that he is focused on reaching white, working-class and rural voters, the kind of voters Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz’s ticket are trying to attract as they anticipate fights to the finish line in swing states where narrower margins of defeat in red districts could put them on top.
Democrats say they ceded nearly all rural districts and even some suburbs to former President Donald Trump for years. Rural districts in states like Wisconsin and Nevada have been transformed into deep-red Trump territory and have been virtually impenetrable to the left since 2016.
Harris campaign officials believe they have a chance with white, moderate and working-class voters, among whom Harris may have milder appeal, by emphasizing Walz’s Midwestern roots, military background, working-class ties, experience as a hunter and career as a football coach.
Harris, too, has sent a message to these voters, drawing on her work as a prosecutor and her self-written biography as the daughter of an immigrant who worked at McDonald’s and then rose to vice president.
Taken as a whole, it’s a playbook not all that different from the one Barack Obama used in 2008, when he chose Joe Biden as his running mate. Then, early in his political career, Obama tapped a Washington veteran with foreign policy expertise to appeal to working-class and white voters.
Several key players from Obama’s team are helping to boost Harris’ campaign, including David Plouffe, a senior adviser for strategy; Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser for messaging; and Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign manager.
The strategy was also used in 2020, but with Biden and Harris turning the tables. As vice presidential candidate, Harris was tasked with appealing to women and voters of color, while Biden touted his union ties and roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
John Anzalone, a chief pollster for both Obama’s campaigns and Biden’s 2020 run, is advising the Harris-Walz campaign. He said any presidential political strategist should remember that only a 44,000-vote lead in the swing states put Biden on top in 2020. Anzalone added that aggressive third-party spending in rural areas may have made the difference.
“You can’t just do grassroots politics. You have to do grassroots expansion and narrow margins in demographics that are rougher for you,” he said. “You might get a beating, but the point is that you get a beating by a narrow margin.”
The Biden campaign began working in those areas months ago, reaching out to rural districts in key states to reach potential voters they say Democrats have ignored for years.
“Democrats have not understood for many cycles the value of showing up in places that are maybe a little bit harder to win because they’re less efficient,” said Dan Kanninen, battleground director for the Harris-Walz campaign. “It was more efficient to go to the big city markets, maybe to target the suburbs, but less efficient to go to rural America because the votes weren’t all in one place.”
Kanninen said that as the trend continued cycle after cycle, “you basically just lose people.” Democrats suffered staggering losses of 80% to 20% in red districts, he said.
The campaign began to counter that early on, setting up offices and staff in those communities, talking to voters and organizing events, including replacement bus tours through more rural areas, Kanninen said. Voters started showing up, he added, saying people “maybe needed the invitation, needed a place to go.”
Now the campaign is emphasizing the Harris-Walz ticket in those areas. Some of the themes emphasized at the Democratic National Convention also went toward that goal, bringing Walz’s football team to the convention stage, chanting patriotic “USA!” cries and featuring Democratic elected officials who were war veterans.
“It’s something you can do to attract a new breed of voters who aren’t part of the Democratic Party yet,” said one source close to the campaign. “You’ll see things like: Who’s going to be a better shot at pheasants — Walz or [JD] Vance? We’re going to keep them off balance.”
The campaign aims to reclaim the images associated with Republicans, such as hunting, football and old-fashioned patriotism.
Walz is also expected to frequently invoke a biographical line that drew widespread applause at the convention, when he said he was in his 40s, had young children and had no political experience running for public office in a deep-red district.
“But you know what? Never underestimate a public school teacher,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
One of the pair’s first rallies was in rural Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where 12,000 people showed up. Walz may have another advantage in rural Wisconsin. According to the campaign, more than 600,000 predominantly rural Wisconsinites live in media markets in Minnesota or in counties across the river from Minnesota. That means those areas are much more familiar with Walz.
In Nevada, more than 3,000 new volunteers have signed up since Biden endorsed Harris on July 21, from rural areas alone.
The campaign, officials say, also plans to focus on issues related to the administration, including highlighting that recent infrastructure funding is aimed at bringing high-speed internet to rural areas and touting Medicaid expansion, which has been popular in places like rural North Carolina. The state, which hasn’t been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008, has already opened offices in rural communities in six counties.
In Wisconsin, Harris’ campaign is active in Republican districts where Democrats have never before opened an office.
“Rural” means different things in different states. In North Carolina and Georgia, rural districts are more diverse, while rural districts in Wisconsin and Nevada, for example, are predominantly white. Harris’ campaign emphasizes Georgia’s government contributions, including new clean energy jobs, rural health care and substantial investments in Georgia farmers.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters in Chicago that rural counties could also have a say in the Senate and, by extension, the next president’s legislative agenda.
“We’re not going to win the rural districts, but we will reduce the margin by which Republicans win them,” Schumer said.
Meanwhile, Republicans portrayed Democrats as out of touch with voters concerned about border security, gas prices, rising auto insurance premiums in states like Nevada and the cost of groceries.
“These are kitchen table issues, and those kitchen table issues come home to roost. And Kamala Harris has done nothing for us for the last three years,” said Nevada GOP Party Chairman Michael McDonald, a Trump adviser.
At the same time, McDonald gave a nod to the intensity of the contest in a state where early polls showed Trump with a significant lead over Biden. Harris’ entry as the presidential candidate has boosted the Democratic numbers.
“They are running a serious campaign, just like us,” he said.
Trump’s team says it is more confident than ever of the depth of support in rural America. It has cast Harris as a “dangerous liberal” and has painted Walz as a failed governor, while accusing him of inflating his military background.
“Team Trump has hundreds of paid staff, more than 300 offices and tens of thousands of active volunteers in swing states, and we are actively working to turn out voters in rural, suburban and urban communities where President Trump is making historic gains and Democrats are being forced on the defensive,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“If the dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and Tim Walz think they’re going to win points in rural America, where hardworking families are being left behind by Kamala’s terrible policies as vice president, they need to think again,” she added. “Rural America is more Trump Country than ever.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
