Harris and Walz Barnstorm Across Battleground States

Happy Friday! At Vice President Kamala Harris’ Michigan rally Wednesday, her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, walked out to “Born to Run,” Bruce Springsteen’s timeless American rock anthem, released this month in 1975. Our Gen Z reporter covering the event had to ask Siri what the song was.

Up to Speed

• After Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rallied with voters in Michigan this week (more on that event below), the Democratic nominee and her running mate spoke to a local United Auto Workers gathering in Detroit and were joined on stage by Shawn Fain, the union’s influential president. Fain praised Harris, who showed up on the picket lines during the 2019 UAW strike during her first presidential run. He was similarly complimentary of Walz, a member of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest union, during his pre-political career as a teacher. “We’re not falling for these folks who are trying to divide us, trying to separate us, trying to pull us apart. That’s not where the strength lies,” Harris told the UAW members. 
• The Harris campaign dropped an ad targeting Latino voters in swing states, focusing on the vice president’s biography and highlighting her tenacity as she built her career. “As our president, determination is how she’ll stop the corporations who gouge our families on rent and groceries,” the ad’s voiceover says. “And she won’t stop fighting until we win.” Republican nominee Donald Trump was leading President Joe Biden by 9 percentage points among Hispanic voters in a New York Times poll conducted weeks before Joe Biden exited the 2024 presidential contest. But more recent surveys have shown Harris leading the former president by double digits with this cohort in battleground states.
• The Harris campaign quietly changed its description of Walz’s military credentials on the campaign website after J.D. Vance and others accused Walz of inflating his record. Previously, the vice presidential nominee’s online bio stated that he was a “retired command sergeant major” but has been changed to say he “served as a command sergeant major.” Walz’s rank was reduced to master sergeant after retiring because he did not complete the required coursework to be a command sergeant major. Harris’ running mate has also been accused of falsely implying that he served in a combat zone.
• Moments after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump last month, local law enforcement officers claimed that they had warned Secret Service agents that the roof the shooter fired from was a potential threat, according to body camera footage obtained by the Wall Street Journal. “I f—ing told them that they needed to post guys f—ing over here. …I talked to the Secret Service guys. They’re like, ‘Yeah, no problem. We’re going to post guys over here,’” an officer said. A different local officer who spotted the gunman on the roof says he unsuccessfully tried to radio an alert to his colleagues. The Secret Service previously claimed that it gave responsibility of covering the area to local law enforcement. 
• Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, released his first television ad of the general election campaign, a spot focusing on the economy paid for by his campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “My parents were raising five boys on a teacher’s salary. Boy, you sure can’t do that today,” he says in the ad. The ad’s voiceover says politicians in Washington, D.C., are “wasting your tax dollars on corporate welfare and giving hotels and health care to illegals, rather than making life more affordable for families.”
• Meanwhile, Rogers’ Democratic opponent, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, hosted multiple campaign events across Michigan this week with Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who is not seeking reelection. After appearing with Harris near Detroit on Wednesday evening, Slotkin and Stabenow held campaign events in Grand Rapids and Lansing, the state capital. 

Harris Commands the Crowd on the Stump in Michigan

ROMULUS, Michigan—Pro-Palestinian protesters heckled Vice President Kamala Harris midway through a campaign rally Wednesday while she stumped for votes with her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

The hecklers were few in number among the roughly 15,000 enthusiastic supporters who packed a hangar at Detroit’s major airport to catch a glimpse of the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket—which has been on a blitz of battleground states that takes them to Arizona on Friday. The crowd reacted by shouting down the protesters, chanting Harris’ name whenever they attempted to interrupt the vice president’s speech to register their opposition to the Biden administration’s support for Israel. With the protesters refusing to quiet down, Harris issued a stern rebuttal. 

“I’m here because we believe in democracy. Everyone’s voice matters, but I am speaking now,” the vice president said, borrowing a line she used in the 2020 vice presidential debate with Mike Pence. Still, the hecklers did not stop, chanting, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide; we won’t vote for genocide!”

“If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking,” she added, causing the crowd to erupt with cheers.

The heckling amounted to the most adversity Harris has faced in public since taking Biden’s place as the Democratic standard bearer on July 21. 

Since then, she has not held a news conference or sat for a one-on-one interview, prompting criticism from Republicans—although the vice president did take a few questions Thursday from reporters traveling with her on Air Force Two. Before arriving in Michigan, Harris and Walz rallied supporters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. There, the GOP vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance—who was shadowing the vice president’s campaign stops—met with reporters on an airport tarmac adjacent to the vice president’s plane. He criticized the Democratic nominee for not making herself available to answer reporters’ questions.

Republicans, naturally, are looking for any angle to undermine Harris’ candidacy. But as a political matter, should Harris be participating in unscripted events, with the media or otherwise?

“I think her priority right now is the right priority, which is getting out to meet as many people as possible because that is what Democrats have wanted. They’ve wanted to see the candidate out in public,” Michigan Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow, who attended the vice president’s Detroit-area rally, told Dispatch Politics.

McMorrow brushed off Vance’s criticism, pointing to the Republican giving an awkward answer to a reporter who asked what made him smile earlier in the day. “If that’s his attack line, I’m not worried about it, because we’ve got a ticket here that is leaning on joy and fun and reminding ourselves why we’re proud of … this country,” the Democratic state legislator said.

But some Harris supporters are urging her to mix it up with reporters and engage in unscripted events. Rachel Lieberman, 28, who works in tech, said she would “absolutely” like to see more of that from Harris.

“I think that was what people noticed, is it sounded like Tim [Walz] was unscripted,” Lieberman added. “And that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for the candid. We’re looking for the raw. But I do think she’s had her moments. We’re on the way there.”

Indeed, Walz sounded candid as he gave a speech similar to the introductory address he delivered in Philadelphia on Tuesday, highlighting his experience as a public school teacher before being elected to Congress in a southern Minnesota district in 2006 that had elected just one Democrat since 1892.

So far, the governor’s experience and progressive bona fides appear to appeal to Democratic base voters here in Michigan. Vida Bonacci, a 64-year-old retired public educator who works for the American Federation of Teachers, spoke approvingly of Walz for that reason.

“My first choice was our governor, Gretchen Whitmer,” she said. “But I knew that wasn’t gonna come to pass. So, you know, I looked at all the candidates, and I said, ‘You know what? He’s a former teacher. I like Tim Walz.’ So, I’m glad she picked him.”

Rallygoers’ devotion to Harris was palpable, continuing the sense of excitement absent among many Democrats when Biden was the presumptive nominee. Selia Rendon, 21, who won Miss Wayne County in 2023, said the younger Harris “energizes younger generations, like myself.” Chris Janderwski, a 35-year-old small business owner, said Harris made it more likely that Democrats would win in November.

“Having Harris come into the race and Biden pulling out, it really reenergized me and really gave me more hope,” he said.

RFK Jr.’s Weird and Fading—But Still Relevant—Presidential Campaign

Can it get any weirder than this? In May, we learned Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former Democrat and current independent presidential candidate, has a dead worm stuck in his brain, and this week we learned of one of RFK Jr.’s pet theories about how it got there. 

As the New Yorker reported, Kennedy found a dead bear cub on the side of the road in upstate New York in 2014, loaded it in his car, “drove to Manhattan and, as darkness fell, entered Central Park with the bear and a bicycle. A person with knowledge of the episode said Kennedy thought it would be funny to make it look as if the animal had been killed by an errant cyclist.” A photo from the day shows Kennedy “putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face.” When the New Yorker asked Kennedy about the incident, he replied: “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”

Even before the stranger-than-fiction incident with a dead bear cub came to light, Kennedy was fading in the polls. This winter, Kennedy was routinely registering in the mid-to-high teens in five-way polling of the presidential race. But he’s now slipped to about 5 percentage points in the average of national surveys. That decline in the polls has coincided with Kennedy’s positive favorable rating flipping to negative.

Over the summer, Republicans and Democrats have taken two very different approaches to bringing home Kennedy-curious voters. While Democrats have tried to marginalize RFK Jr., Trump has tried to woo him. 

The Republican National Convention was essentially a week-long advertisement designed to win disaffected men who didn’t attend college—the kind of voters who love pro wrestling, Ultimate Fighting, and Tucker Carlson’s conspiracy theories. Even if Trump’s choice of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance over more establishment-friendly choices as his running mate was a mistake, there was at least a certain political logic to it if the campaign sought to win over these Kennedy-curious voters. Trump called Kennedy at the outset of the GOP convention asking for his support and appealing to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine sentiments, saying in a leaked video that it’s wrong “when you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby.” Trump’s plan to win over RFK Jr. voters may have suffered a blow on Thursday when popular podcaster Joe Rogan endorsed Kennedy.

A Democratic campaign operative told Dispatch Politics the real game-changer in bringing home disaffected Kennedy-curious Democrats was swapping out the 81-year-old Biden for 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris on July 21. 

In addition to the news stories portraying Kennedy as a weirdo, the messaging that has been most helpful to luring back disaffected Democrats has focused on abortion and January 6. In comments this year, Kennedy has waffled between support and opposition to limits on abortion late in pregnancy. He has also questioned the prosecution of some accused of breaking the law on January 6 and even hired a staffer who was present outside the U.S. Capitol that day. Highlighting RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance is a less effective message because vaccine skepticism is fairly common among his progressive fans.

Even though he’s only registering at 5 percent in the national polling average, Kennedy’s campaign is still relevant for two simple reasons. First, the Trump-Harris race is now a toss-up, and Kennedy’s small share of the vote could still determine the outcome. Second, Kennedy seems to be on track to be on the ballot in most key battleground states, and could very well be on the ballot in all of them.

Kennedy is officially on the ballot in Michigan and North Carolina, where he overcame a legal challenge to gain ballot access in July. In four of the five remaining battlegrounds, the Kennedy campaign has said it has submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot but still needs to overcome some legal hurdles. 

In Nevada, election officials have verified 22,000 signatures—far more than the 10,000 needed for ballot access—but the state Democratic party has filed a lawsuit trying to keep Kennedy off the ballot there “because he is running as a member of minor political parties in other states,” the Nevada Independent reported on July 26. “Nevada law stipulates that independent candidates for any partisan office must not be registered with a political party or proposing to run with a political party.” Kennedy qualified for the ballot in Michigan as the Natural Law Party candidate.

In Pennsylvania, the Kennedy campaign contends it has submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, but on Thursday a Democratic-aligned PAC filed a lawsuit alleging there are “numerous ineligible signatures and defects.” In Georgia, Kennedy has submitted 21,000 signatures, more than the 7,500 needed to qualify, but again faces legal efforts by the state Democratic party to keep him off the ballot. In Wisconsin, Kennedy submitted 4,000 signatures this week, double the 2,000 needed to qualify. In Arizona, Kennedy has not yet submitted the number of signatures necessary—3 percent of registered independent voters—to qualify for the ballot and faces an August 17 filing deadline.

With each of the last two presidential elections coming down to a few battleground states where the victor prevailed by less than a percentage point, it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s weird and fading 2024 presidential campaign.

Unlike Harris, Trump Meets the Media

Donald Trump held a news conference Thursday in an apparent effort to blunt Vice President Kamala Harris’ momentum. Instead, the hour-long confab at Mar-a-Lago saw the former president flit from attacking his Democratic opponent to bashing fellow Republicans to floating conspiracy theories.

Trump attacked Harris as “a radical left person at a level nobody’s seen” and said that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the vice president’s running mate, “has positions that it’s not even possible to believe they exist. He’s going for things that nobody’s even heard of. Heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds.” The comments signaled that Trump campaign strategy could lean heavily on tying the Democratic ticket to the extreme left wing of the party. “There’s certainly never been anybody so liberal like these two,” Trump said. 

The Republican nominee referred to Harris as the “border czar,” charging that 20 million immigrants crossed the border illegally since President Joe Biden assumed office in January 2021.

Trump also criticized Harris for ducking questions from the media. “Excuse me, what are we doing right now?” Trump asked reporters. “[Harris] doesn’t know how to do a news conference—she’s not smart enough to do a news conference.” He reiterated previous complaints about the Democratic Party’s ticket switch from Biden to Harris following the president’s decision to drop his reelection bid in late July. “The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I’m no Biden fan, but I tell you what, from a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away,” Trump said. Asked about his campaign strategy in the wake of the swap, he replied: “I haven’t recalibrated strategy at all. It’s the same policies: open borders, weak on crime. I think she’s worse than Biden.” 

Meanwhile, in a shift, Trump said he would be willing to debate Harris, throwing out a series of dates on various networks he said he had agreed to. However, both his campaign and the Harris campaign have officially agreed to only one, on September 10 hosted by ABC. Additionally, Fox News has proposed a September 4 debate while NBC is pitching another on September 25, the Associated Press reported.  

Trump called the news conference amid Harris’ rising poll numbers. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its rating of Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada from “lean Republican” to “toss up.” Some of the latest polls have Harris gaining nationally, although the former president insisted Thursday that he is still winning. “We’re leading and, in some cases, substantially,” he said. He cited a Rasmussen poll that found Harris trailing him by 5 points. He also touted his support among minority groups, including black, Hispanic, and Jewish voters. “White males have gone through the roof,” he added about a demographic his campaign has been aggressively pursuing. Despite the tightening race, Trump maintained he was happy to be facing off against Harris. 

“We were given Joe Biden, and now we’re given somebody else,” he said. “And I think, frankly, I’d rather be running against the ‘somebody else.’” 

Notable and Quotable

“He’s the only governor I know who curses more than I do.”

—Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, speaking of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, at Vice President Kamala Harris’ Michigan rally, August 7, 2024