VP hopefuls make Midwest push as Vance pops in on Minnesota, Walz swings through Wisconsin
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Mere minutes after Tim Walz took flight Monday on a campaign swing to Wisconsin, JD Vance touched down in Minnesota as the vice presidential candidates concentrated on the kind of Midwestern turf familiar to both and pivotal in the election.
Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential nominee, had some prominent Democrats with him on stops in Wisconsin. While polls show a tight race there and nationally, Walz daydreamed aloud about a decisive win.
At multiple stops, Walz highlighted comments former President Donald Trump made over the weekend about possibly using military troops to root out enemies “from within” the country.
“To Donald Trump, anybody who doesn’t agree with him is the enemy. I tell you that not to make you fearful or anything. I tell you that because we need to whip his butt and put this guy behind us. That’s what we need to do,” Walz said to an audience of college students and others at a coffeehouse in Eau Claire. “I want to wake up when this guy is not on the national stage.”
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Vance, an Ohio senator and the Republican presidential nominee, went directly from the tarmac at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to a private fundraiser. Later stopped by the former 3rd Precinct police building in Minneapolis, which was set ablaze by a mob amid the protests following George Floyd’s murder by officers in 2020.
Vance is just the latest Republican to use it as backdrop after U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson did the same earlier this year. Vance described the building as a symbol of failed leadership by Walz and suggested presidential nominee Kamala Harris was also too lenient toward crime and unrest. He said it “drives home the stakes” of the election.
“The story of Minneapolis is coming to every community across the United States of America if we promote Kamala Harris to president of the United States,” Vance said outside the fenced-off precinct building.
Vance was flanked by retired police officers and Republican 2nd Congressional District nominee Joe Teirab.
The city has since found a new location for the precinct station. However, the heavily damaged former station remains unoccupied. And Minneapolis city leaders and residents have debated possible uses for it.
With just three weeks left until Election Day, both served notice that the Upper Midwest could determine who wins the presidency, particularly in places just to Minnesota’s east. In separate visits, both vice presidential candidates urged voters to get involved and stressed the stakes of the election.
Vance said Minnesota isn’t off the Republican map despite a lack of recent visits and no sustained television advertising on par with the Harris presence on Minnesota stations. He said while Minnesota has Democratic voting tendencies in presidential elections for decades, the GOP ticket thinks it has a chance and “we’re going to fight for it.”
“We think we have the momentum,” Vance said of the 2024 race at large. “We think, frankly, even without the momentum, if the election was held today, we would win.”
Appearing with U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin during a campaign stop at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Walz said the approaching election is going to be close and the late pushes to get voters out will matter.
“I would encourage you all — we need you. This is not hyperbole,” Walz said. “I think it’s very realistic to believe that this race will be won going through Wisconsin, and going through some of these counties, and reelecting Tammy Baldwin, those votes all up and down the ticket will make a difference.”
Kirsten Thell, a Mankato native who is president of the College Democrats at the Eau Claire school, stressed how government decisions can affect young people, citing shifts in laws around reproductive health care.
“Sometimes I hear my fellow students say they’re not all that interested in politics,” she said. “But as Governor Tim Walz says, ‘Well, that’s too bad. Politics is interested in you.’”
The Democrats sat in front of a wall of campaign signs that spelled out 22, meant to show the number of days left until Nov. 5.
In Green Bay, Walz held events with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who were on hand to launch a Midwest bus tour for the campaign.
“We have to keep Wisconsin and the rest of the blue wall in place. Because here's the deal about the two jokers in this race, Donald Trump and JD Vance are dangerous, right?” Evers said. “They're not running to help others or running to serve themselves and those at the top.”
Walz didn’t hold back in his remarks, slamming Trump as a risk on health care, as anti-union and as out for himself.
“We can’t have four more years of this,” Walz said. “We won’t have four more years of it.”
A third vice presidential candidate, the Green Party’s Butch Ware, also was in the region on Monday.
Ware met with supporters along the Mississippi river at Annie Young Meadow, a park named for a longtime Green Party Minneapolis Park Board commissioner.
Ware, who grew up in Minneapolis, spoke intimately around a bonfire with a handful of Green Party supporters. He is running with Jill Stein, and their ticket has the backing of some disaffected Democrats upset with the U.S. assistance to Israel as it carries out a war against Hamas in Gaza.
“The reality is, you are not giving this election to Donald Trump if you walk away from the Democratic party and vote Green,” Ware said. “The Democrats are throwing this election away because they could stop the electoral carnage if they stop the physical carnage. They could stop their electoral bleeding with a cease fire and an arms embargo.”
Among those gathered along the river was Cam Gordon, a former Minneapolis City Council member and co-chair of the state’s Green Party. He said he’s noticed an increasing number of people turn green, as the war wages on.
“The other parties aren’t willing to talk about it and aren’t willing to address it and aren’t willing to look at it,” he said.
MPR News reporter Cari Spencer contributed to this story.