Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, continued their swing-state tour with rallies in rural Wisconsin and Detroit, Michigan, on Wednesday. The campaign said the rallies each drew more than 10,000 people.
The rallies, which followed a raucous event in Philadelphia, provided Harris with an opportunity to further introduce Walz, a former, lesser-known Midwestern governor, to Democrats in the key swing state.
In Eau Claire, a northwestern Wisconsin city less than a two-hour drive from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, the rally drew attendees from both states — and a total of 12,000 people, the campaign said. The rally in Detroit on Wednesday night drew 15,000 supporters in another crucial swing state, Harris’ campaign told reporters. Walz called it “the largest rally of the campaign” so far.
The large crowd in Detroit repeatedly chanted: “We’re not going back,” the Democrats’ counter-narrative to Trump’s anti-abortion policies and his slogan “make America great again.”
Attendees in Wisconsin said they were excited to see a Harris and Walz ticket. “I’m elated,” said Lori Schlecht, a Minnesota teacher who said she’s excited for Walz given his background in public education — Walz was a public school teacher before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006. “Minnesota is blessed to have him, and I’m happy to see him on the national stage. He’s authentic and real — he gets shit done.”
Many Minnesotans in attendance saw Walz’s down-to-earth demeanor as an asset to the Democratic Party.
“Walz is my mate,” said Colin Mgam, who is 65 and retired and drove to the rally from St Paul. “He’s straight talking and he’s going to do well,” Mgam added.
While Midwestern Democrats praised Walz as “one of us,” Harris’ campaign announced Wednesday that it had raised $36 million from supporters in the 24 hours since announcing him as Harris’ running mate.
The rallies had some shaky moments, with protesters in the Detroit crowd briefly attempting to disrupt Harris’ speech. Reporters at the scene said the interruption came from pro-Palestinian protesters chanting, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide. We will not vote for genocide.”
In response, Harris first said that in a democracy, everyone’s voice matters, but that “I’m speaking now.” Then, as the protesters continued to shout, she said, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, say so, or I’ll speak.” The crowd cheered.
Both rallies were also marked by medical incidents as thousands of people stood together in the summer heat, prompting several speakers to pause their remarks and indicate that people in the crowd needed help. Calls for a “doctor” interrupted several speeches, including both Walz’s. In Wisconsin, Walz urged his supporters to drink water and “take care of each other.” In Michigan, he thanked the crowd for taking care of their neighbors. “We are neighbors and we are not weird,” he said.
The Eau Claire rally underscored Harris’ focus on Wisconsin, where she held her first rally since Joe Biden announced the end of his re-election bid. In 2016, Donald Trump won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes, and Biden won the state by a similar margin in 2020.
Indie folk band Bon Iver, whose lead singer is from Eau Claire and previously supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020, opened for Harris at Wednesday’s event.
In Wisconsin, Walz spoke first, focusing on his Midwestern background and noting that he had family in the audience. “As a Midwesterner, I know something about dedication to the people,” he said. He also spoke at length about his experience as a football coach, a social studies teacher and service in the Minnesota National Guard, emphasizing his role as a kind of ambassador for rural and working-class Americans for the Democratic Party.
And he took direct aim at Trump. “Don’t believe him when he acts stupid. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. He knows exactly what Project 2025 will do to limit and take away our freedoms. He knows it will rig the economy for the super-rich if he gets a chance to come back to the White House. It’s going to be a lot worse than it was four years ago.”
Walz also discussed his support for and personal experience with IVF, the fertility treatment that has become a point of contention for Republicans after an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos have personhood.
In Michigan, Harris repeated her now-popular line of attack that as a prosecutor, she “knows the type of Donald Trump,” but had to interrupt her supporters’ repeated cries of “Lock him up!” when she addressed Trump’s recent convictions. She told them the courts would handle that and that “we’re going to beat him in November.”
Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, who appeared onstage before Harris in Detroit, called her “a tough woman who stood on the picket line with striking workers” and praised Walz as one of the union’s top picks for vice president.
“He’s one of us. He’s a worker. He knows working class values,” Fain said. “Best of all, he’s a proud union member.”
Fain called Trump “a lapdog of the billionaire class” and “a thug,” prompting the crowd in Detroit to chant, “He’s a thug! He’s a thug!”
Walz, who was not initially an obvious candidate for Harris’ vice presidential nomination, gained widespread attention within the party after giving a candid and optimistic interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program in which he encouraged Harris and dismissed Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance as “weird.”
Donald Trump has been quick to portray Walz, who has worked with progressive lawmakers in Minnesota to pass a series of progressive laws — codifying abortion rights, expanding worker protections and enacting landmark voting rights legislation — as a member of the “radical left,” a line of attack the former president is likely to continue.
But Walz stood up to Trump in Wisconsin on Wednesday. “This election is about where this country is going. Donald Trump knows where he wants to go. He wants to take us back.”
