PHILADELPHIA — Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) took his first shot at Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) on Tuesday, calling Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate a “double down choice for bad leadership.”
Vance did not address Walz during a stump speech held in South Philadelphia, instead bringing to the microphone families hurt by what he described as Harris’s failed border policies. He tied those policies to crime and a nationwide spike in drug deaths.
“I have to ask, why is it necessary? Why are they suffering?” Vance said before detailing his own upbringing with a mother who struggled with addiction. “And the answer is because we have a leadership that is failing.”
But in a Q&A session held with reporters after his remarks, Vance, who former President Donald Trump chose as his running mate last month, laid into the man he could soon debate.
“She has governed as a San Francisco liberal, and she chose a running mate that will be a San Francisco-style liberal,” he said of Harris, citing Walz’s handling of the 2020 Minneapolis riots as governor and support for granting illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.
Vance did not mention that he lived in San Francisco after graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, where he worked as a venture capitalist before returning to Ohio to launch a Senate run.
Democrats chose Walz, in part, due to his perceived appeal to working-class voters in Midwestern states. He is a veteran with an affable demeanor and previously represented a conservative district in the House of Representatives.
But Republicans relished the choice of Walz, whose unabashed progressive record has allowed them to reinforce their claims that Harris is out-of-step with the mainstream of the country.
“The biggest problem with the Tim Walz pick, it’s not Tim Walz himself — it’s Kamala Harris,” Vance said. “That when given an opportunity, she will bend the knee to the most radical elements of her party, and that’s exactly what she did here.”
By choosing Walz, Harris passed over Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), whose Jewish heritage was viewed as a liability with pro-Palestinian voters in swing states such as Michigan.
Walz also animated the political Left given his support for unions.
“Whatever disagreements on policy you have about somebody, the fact that the vice presidential race on the Democratic side became so focused on his ethnicity, I think, is absolutely disgraceful, and it’s insulting to Americans, whatever background you’re from,” Vance said of Shapiro.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.
The event is one of several Vance will be holding over the next week as he shadows Harris’s swing through a series of battleground states.
Walz will hold his inaugural rally with Harris in Philadelphia later Tuesday, before headlining events with her in Wisconsin, Michigan, and elsewhere.
The Trump campaign has already announced campaign stops with Vance that mirror Harris’s.
At the event, Vance acknowledged that he called to congratulate Walz on his selection as Harris’s running mate, something he described as the “polite” thing to do.
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But he declined to debate Walz until the governor formally becomes the vice presidential nominee at the Democrats’ convention in Chicago in two weeks.
“And then, of course, we want to have a robust debate,” Vance said before criticizing Harris for not holding interviews with the media since her campaign launch.
