Sandee Kosmo was in her car today, inching along a backed-up county road on the way to Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally in Eau Claire, Wis., grinning about the prospect of seeing Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
“He’s so Midwest,” she gushed, after I asked to interview her as she crawled along. She praised his wry sense of humor. His hunting background. Even his ever-so-Midwestern faith.
“I’m a Lutheran pastor,” Kosmo, 78, said. “And Walz is a Lutheran!”
The Harris campaign chose Walz partly in the hope that he would connect with voters in critical states like Wisconsin. And the crowd that gathered in Eau Claire today — at least 10,000 people on event grounds surrounded by cornfields — was eager to claim him as its own.
“Kamala made a good pick,” Wisconsin’s secretary of state, Sarah Godlewski, told the cheering crowd, “not just because Tim understands our love for a good Friday fish fry, but he also embodies our shared beliefs.”
Eau Claire is a deep blue college town, and it’s far from clear that the appeal of the governor from the other side of the St. Croix will translate beyond liberal bastions like this one and expand his ticket’s competitive terrain. But as I wound my way through the crowd today, it occurred to me that the Eau Claires of the world might be the main point.
In recent years, Wisconsin Democrats have notched major victories by running up their numbers in strongholds like Madison, La Crosse and Milwaukee. That means Walz was here not simply to sound folksy, talk about hunting and reach out to rural voters. His purpose, electorally speaking, is to fire up Wisconsin progressives who wish their state was a just little more like his.
“Walz has made Minnesota a model of progressive government,” said William Lane, a member of the local Democratic Party in neighboring Dunn County, wistfully adding that he wished Wisconsin’s long-divided government could be more like Walz’s Democratic trifecta.
“Minnesota has done an excellent job with taxes, and how the money is spent to make things better for everyone,” said David Klaas, a wrestling coach from Spooner who loves Walz so much that he yelled a line from the governor’s stump speech — “Mind your own damn business” — into the crowd at one point.
The Harris campaign is betting that leaning into Walz’s unabashed progressivism might work — and, given Wisconsin’s famous swinginess, that comes with some risk. But Dane County, the Democratic stronghold that contains Madison, is growing rapidly. Last year, voters there helped power the easy victory of Justice Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge who campaigned on abortion rights and preserving democracy, to the state’s Supreme Court. She became part of the liberal majority that ruled that Wisconsin’s heavily gerrymandered state legislative maps needed to be redrawn.
So, even though Republicans are attacking him for it, Walz did little to shy away from his liberal record as he spoke to the crowd.
“I don’t need you telling me about our health care,” he said. “I don’t need you telling us who we love. And I sure the hell don’t need you telling us what books we’re going to read.”
“Just like Wisconsin, over in Minnesota, we believe in the Second Amendment, but we also believe in common-sense gun violence laws,” he added later.
This is not to say that Walz and his supporters did not do their darnedest to be Wisconsin-friendly. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, told the crowd that Walz and Harris went together like “beers and brats” and “custard and curds.” Walz shouted out the Wisconsin Badgers, said he had family in attendance and told the crowd that he was refraining from performing the University of Minnesota’s fight song, “The Minnesota Rouser.”
Tim McCarthy, 60, a teacher from the college town of Ripon, said he was thrilled both to see Walz and to be at a rally with “like-minded people.”
“There’s a lot of conservatism in northern Wisconsin that you’re not going to shake loose,” McCarthy said. “They’ll support Trump no matter what.”
But he thought that Walz would catch on in his town — and suggested that the campaign might not even need to bother with more conservative parts of the state.
TEXTS FROM THE ROAD
A tale of dueling campaign stops (and no ice cream)
While I was covering the Harris rally, my colleague Michael Bender was with Senator JD Vance, who made his own stop in Eau Claire today. We texted this afternoon about the very different days we were having.
JB: Hi! Where are you at the moment?
MB: I’m aboard “Trump Force Two” — the campaign plane that the Trump team has given Senator Vance, and we’re headed back to Ohio after stops in Michigan and Wisconsin today.
JB: When did Trump Force Two get to Eau Claire? And what did you see when you arrived?
MB: If you’re still in Eau Claire, you should get some ice cream at Olson’s! Vance stopped there for a scoop but didn’t get reporters any. (Not that I’m bitter about that or anything …)
But one of the funniest things I saw today was right when I arrived — Air Force Two, the plane that flew Harris to Wisconsin, parked right next to Vance’s campaign plane at the airport!
JB: I wondered if that was going to happen. Of all the rural tarmacs, you had to stop at mine …
MB: I think it’s cool when competing campaigns cross paths, and it was especially fun this time because Harris had just arrived a few minutes earlier. Vance leaned into the moment for a bit of political theater. As soon as he got off his plane, he made a beeline for Harris’s. Even though her motorcade pulled away, he stopped and talked to local reporters, and made a point of underscoring how he was willing to take their questions but Harris wasn’t.
Vance also joked that he was just checking out the plane that would be his after the election.
JB: Dress for the plane you want, not the plane you have. What was Vance doing in Eau Claire? What is his mission right now?
MB: He has been following the Harris campaign around the country. I think it’s mostly to try to drive the Harris campaign nuts. I say that only half jokingly. Harris has been on a political hot streak since President Biden decided not to seek re-election, and that has shown up in polls as she’s closed the gap with Trump.
Vance’s main goal seems to be disrupting that. He tried to do that today in part by reminding reporters that Harris isn’t taking their questions and by blasting her newly selected running mate, Tim Walz, saying that he stretched the truth about his military record.
JB: What was the tone of the Vance appearances? And did he rally regular voters — or just talk to reporters?
Vance’s appearances featured almost no regular voters. They were all mostly media events so that he could be included in local reports. Instead of “Harris Campaigns in Detroit” headlines, those stories will more likely be about Harris and Vance.
The only event he had with actual voters was when a dozen or so Republican supporters were waiting for him at Olson’s. (Did I mention he didn’t get reporters any ice cream?)
MB: Thank you so much for doing this, Mike! And I really hope you get some ice cream in Ohio. Graeter’s awaits.
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