With flannel, football and pheasants, Harris and Walz set out to conquer Trump’s territory

Expect to see more of Tim Walz this fall, in orange. Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will be donning a bright vest while pheasant hunting. That is when he’s not wearing one. bad taste flannelsTalking about cleaning your gutters or singing“Save a lot of money at Menards.”

EveryDad’s image, complemented by his nickname, “Coach Walz,” is an unmistakable signal aimed at reaching white working-class and rural voters — the kind of electorate that Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz’s ticket is trying to attract in anticipation of fights to the finish in battleground states where narrow margins of defeat in red counties could put them over the top.

Democrats say they ceded nearly every rural county and even some suburbs to former President Donald Trump for years. Rural counties in states like Wisconsin and Nevada became deeply Republican territory for Trump and have been virtually impenetrable to the left since 2016.

Harris campaign officials believe they have a chance with moderate and working-class white voters — among whom Harris may have softer appeal — by emphasizing Walz’s Midwestern roots, his military experience, his ties to labor, his experience as a hunter and his career as a football coach.

More Read

US Elections: Early voting in person begins in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia

Menchito, heir of the CJNG, found guilty in a Washington court

Strong debate in the United States Congress over Chevron’s oil business with the Maduro dictatorship

Harris has also sent signals to those voters, drawing on her work as a prosecutor and her self-written biography as the daughter of an immigrant who worked at McDonald’s and then rose through the ranks to become vice president.

In general, this is a similar strategy to the one employed by Barack Obama in 2008, when he chose Joe Biden as his running mate. Back then, still early in his political career, Obama chose a Washington veteran with experience in foreign policy to appeal to working-class and white voters.

Some of the top players on Obama’s team are helping to power Harris’s campaign, including David Plouffe, senior strategy adviser; Stephanie Cutter, senior messaging adviser; and Jen O’Malley Dillon, campaign manager.

The strategy was also used in 2020, but Biden and Harris switched roles. As vice presidential candidate, Harris was to help drum up interest among women and voters of color, while Biden touted his ties to working class people and his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

John Anzalone, the lead pollster for both Obama and Biden’s 2020 campaigns, is advising the Harris-Walz campaign. Anzalone said any presidential political strategist should remember that a lead of just 44,000 votes in battleground states put Biden over the top in 2020. Anzalone added that aggressive third-party spending in rural areas may have made the difference.

“You can’t just do grassroots politics. You have to expand the base and narrow the margins in demographics that are harder for you,” he said. “You might get beaten, but the important thing is that you get beaten by a smaller margin.”

Jim Messina, who served as Obama’s campaign manager in 2012, said Harris had “the best month in American political history since Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary and started a run.”

“But in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, she lost Pennsylvania and Ohio and everything got complicated,” Messina said, adding: “Vice President Harris has managed to tie the race. She may have a one-point lead, but it’s still incredibly close.”

On the ground, the Biden campaign began working in those areas months ago, putting down roots in rural counties across battleground states to reach potential voters they say Democrats have largely ignored for years.

“For many cycles, Democrats didn’t understand the value of being present in places that might be a little bit harder to win because they were less efficient,” said Dan Kanninen, the Harris-Walz campaign’s battlefield director. “It was more efficient to go to big-city markets, maybe focus on the suburbs, but less efficient to go to rural America, because the votes weren’t all in one place.”

Kanninen said that as the trend continued cycle after cycle, “people were completely lost.” Democrats were suffering staggering losses of 80% to 20% in Republican counties, he said.

The campaign began to counter that early on by setting up offices and staff in those communities, talking to voters and organizing events, including bus tours of more rural areas, Kanninen said. Voters began showing up, he added, saying people “maybe needed the invitation, needed a place to go.”

Now, the campaign is highlighting the Harris-Walz ticket in those areas. Some of the themes emphasized at the Democratic National Convention also aimed at that goal: bringing Walz’s football team onto the convention stage, pushing patriotic chants of “USA!” and featuring Democratic elected officials who were military veterans.

“It’s something you can do to attract a new type of voter who hasn’t been part of the Democratic Party,” said a source close to the campaign. “We’ll look at things like: Who’s going to be a better pheasant shooter, Walz or (JD) Vance? We’re going to keep them off balance.”

The campaign sees an opportunity to reclaim images that have become associated with Republicans, including hunting, football and old-fashioned patriotism.

Walz is also expected to frequently repeat a biographical line that drew much applause at the convention, when he spoke of being in his 40s, with young children and no political experience running for office in a deeply Republican district.

“But you know what? Never underestimate a public school teacher,” he said to roars from the crowd.

One of the first campaign events for both men was in rural Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where 12,000 people turned out. Walz may have another advantage in rural Wisconsin. According to the campaign, more than 600,000 predominantly rural Wisconsinites live in Minnesota media markets or in counties that are across the river from Minnesota. That means those areas are much more familiar with Walz.

In Nevada, since Biden endorsed Harris on July 21, more than 3,000 new volunteers have signed up from rural areas alone.

The campaign, officials say, also plans to address issues tied to the administration, including emphasizing that recent infrastructure funding is aimed at bringing High speed internet to rural areas and promoting Medicaid expansion, which has been popular in places like rural North Carolina. The state, which has not been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008, has already opened offices in rural communities in six counties.

In Wisconsin, Harris’ campaign has a presence in Republican counties where Democrats have not previously opened offices.

“Rural” means different things in different states. In North Carolina and Georgia, rural counties are more diverse, while rural counties in Wisconsin and Nevada, for example, are predominantly white. Harris’ campaign is highlighting the administration’s contributions in Georgia, including new clean energy jobs, rural health care, and substantial investment In Georgia, farmers.

Speaking to reporters in Chicago last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said rural counties could also help decide the Senate and, by extension, the next president’s legislative agenda.

“We’re not going to win rural counties, but we will reduce the margin by which Republicans win them,” Schumer said.

Republicans, meanwhile, painted Democrats as out of touch with voters who are concerned about border security, gas prices, rising auto insurance rates in places like Nevada and the cost of food.

“These are everyday problems that are repeated at home. And Kamala Harris, for the last three years, has done nothing for us,” said Michael McDonald, chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, an adviser to Trump.

At the same time, McDonald highlighted the intensity of the race in a state where early polls showed Trump with a considerable lead over Biden. Harris’ entry as a presidential candidate has improved the Democratic numbers.

“They are running a serious campaign, just like we are,” he said.

Trump’s team says it is more confident than ever about the depth of its support in rural America. It has called Harris “dangerously liberal” and painted Walz as a failed governor, accusing him of exaggerating his military experience.

“The Trump team has hundreds of paid staff, more than 300 offices and tens of thousands of volunteers active in battleground states, and we are actively working to turn out voters in rural, suburban and urban communities where President Trump is making historic gains and Democrats are forced to play defense,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

“If the dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and Tim Walz think they are going to win points in rural America, where working families are being abandoned by Kamala’s terrible policies as vice president, they should think twice,” he added. “Rural America is now more than ever Trump’s country.”

Keynote USA

For the Latest News, Follow KeynoteUSA on Twitter Or Google News.