Support truly
independent journalism
Vice President Kamala Harris and her newly announced running mate Tim Walz are barnstorming across battleground states this week after making their electric debut in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.
Harris and Walz – the presumptive Democratic presidential ticket – will next appear together in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday and then Las Vegas, Nevada, on Saturday.
Their Republican rivals Donald Trump and JD Vance have been tailing them on the campaign trail, with dueling stops in Michigan and Wisconsin earlier this week.
Harris and Walz have had to postpone scheduled visits to North Carolina and Georgia due to severe weather under Tropical Storm Debby. Trump and Vance have also postponed their North Carolina rallies. Those events will be rescheduled, according to the campaigns.
President Joe Biden won those swing states in the 2020 presidential election — except for North Carolina — and flipped Arizona and Georgia for Democrats by razor-thin margins.
Harris and Walz kicked off their tour in Wisconsin with a rally and performance from Bon Iver on Wednesday afternoon. Governor Tony Evers and Senator Tammy Baldwin also joined the event.
That night, they were in Detroit before holding another campaign event in Michigan on Thursday.
With Harris and Walz heading west, Vance is spending the weekend at fundraising events in Texas.
Trump, who has been fundraising in Florida, will hold a rally in Montana on Friday, his first major campaign event in a week.
At their Philadelphia rally on Tuesday night, Harris told the estimated 12,000 people in attendance that she “set out to find a partner who can build this brighter future” during her weeks-old campaign for the presidency.
Harris’s search for a running mate led her to a “leader who can unite this nation and move us forward,” someone who was “a fighter for the middle class” and a “patriot who believes as I do the extraordinary promise of America, a promise of freedom, opportunity and justice not just for some but for all,” she said.
Walz — a 60-year-old military veteran, former school teacher and congressman and the current governor of Minnesota — told the crowd that Trump “doesn’t know the first thing about service, because he’s too busy serving himself.”
The former president “weakens our economy to strengthen his own hand, mocks our laws, and sows chaos and division, and that’s to say nothing of his record as president,” said Walz, who said Trump “froze” during the Covid-19 crisis and “drove the economy into the ground,” adding: “Make no mistake: violent crime was up under Donald Trump.”
“That’s not counting the crimes he committed,” Walz added.
