When Tim Walz and JD Vance square off as vice-presidential picks on Tuesday, it will be the biggest debate stage for both of the politicians who are newly becoming household names.
Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, have been honing their public speaking skills – and their pointed barbs at each other – in TV appearances and at events around the country in the past few months.
Their experiences in electoral debates haven’t reached the levels or notoriety that come along with a presidential campaign, but both have faced opponents in public debates in past elections.
And given the tightness of the presidential race, and how poorly the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump went, there will probably be more people tuned in to the vice presidential debate than in past cycles. While VP debates don’t usually tip the scales much, they could matter in a close race – and they build profiles for lower-profile politicians who will probably stay on the national scene for years to come.
Walz’s debate experience
To practice before Tuesday’s VP debate, Walz has used Pete Buttigieg, transportation secretary and frequent TV news interviewee, as a Vance stand-in – both Buttigieg and Vance are Ivy Leaguers from the midwest and roughly the same age.
Walz, 60, first ran for Congress in a red-leaning district in Minnesota in 2006 and kept the seat until 2019, when he assumed the governor’s office. He ran for governor first in 2018 and then for re-election in 2022.
USA Today watched 10 hours of Walz’s debate footage from over the years, summarizing: “Walz’s optimism and fire is alive and well in his almost two decades of being in politics.” In his first debate, during the 2006 race where he ousted a Republican incumbent, he was at turns on offense and feisty, the paper noted, including posing a climate question to opponent Gil Gutknecht, then saying: “I’m not sure I would get an answer on that one.”
Over the course of these frequent elections, he has debated his primary and general election opponents. At various points, his detractors have called his answers in debates and press appearances “word salad”, meaning he says a garble of words that don’t quite arrive at a point. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have also seen their fair share of criticism over word salads.
In his most recent election, he debated the Republican Scott Jensen in 2022, the only general election debate he did that year.
In that debate, recapped recently by the Washington Examiner, Jensen attacked Walz on the state’s Covid-19 response, policing, taxes and energy issues. At one point, after Walz defended electric vehicle incentives, Jensen said Walz’s answer was “just a word salad with no substance”.
Walz sought to hit out at Jensen on abortion, with Jensen attempting to deflect because an abortion question wasn’t on the Minnesota ballot.
This August, after the VP debate was announced, Jensen posted a photo of himself and an empty podium, an image from a local public television debate that Walz had not agreed to attend. “Be careful, Tim Walz knows a thing or two about not showing up to debates,” Jensen wrote.
Vance’s debate experience
Vance, 40, is much newer to public office – and the debate stages that often accompany it – than Walz. His first run for office was in 2022, for Ohio senate. His race was closely watched nationally in part because of his fame as an author and because of the rightwing tech investor Peter Thiel’s huge financial investment in it.
For Vance’s debate prep, the Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer has stood in as Walz.
In 2022, Vance ran against the Democrat Tim Ryan. They debated twice, with attack lines being more nationalized and centered around their party’s leaders. Politico called their second matchup “so ugly that it was mildly surprising to see Republican JD Vance and Democratic Rep Tim Ryan shake hands at the end”. Ryan contended that Vance was too close to Trump and said Vance “kissed his ass”, a reference to comments Trump made that year claiming Vance was “kissing my ass he wants my support so bad”. Vance tried to tie Ryan to Nancy Pelosi.
Vance defended Trump during the 2022 debate – something he’s likely to do during Tuesday’s debate as well. In reference to the ass-kissing comments, Vance said Trump “told a joke”.
“I know the president very well and he was joking about a New York Times story. That’s all he was doing. I didn’t take offense to it – I talked to the president before it. I talked to the president after it. Everybody there took it as a joke.”
Ryan told the Hill that Walz should be himself while also holding Vance accountable for lies and obfuscation. Danny O’Connor, who served as the Vance stand-in for Ryan’s debate prep, told Politico that Vance will probably stay on message and hammer the Trump campaign line on big issues even if it’s untrue, but that he also has a tendency toward awkward laughter, something seen in viral clips from his campaign trail appearances.
“If someone were to say, ‘Senator Vance, you’ve supported a national ban on abortion in the past,’ I guarantee he’ll laugh at that and say that’s not true, and then say why he doesn’t support it,” O’Connor told the publication. “Generally he’ll laugh if something is absolutely true that he needs to defuse.”
