With flannel, football and pheasants, Harris and Walz make a play for Trump territory
The Harris-Walz campaign sees an opportunity with white moderate and blue-collar voters in rural counties and exurbs, hoping to narrow the GOP's winning margins in those areas.
Expect to see more of Tim Walz this fall — in orange. Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, will be donning a bright vest while pheasant hunting. That’s when he isn’t wearing tacky flannels, talking about cleaning his gutters or singing, “Save big money at Menards.”
The EveryDad image, rounded out by his nickname, “Coach Walz,” is an unmistakable signal aimed at reaching white working-class and rural voters, the kind of electorate the ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz is trying to attract in anticipation of fights to the finish in battleground states where narrowing loss margins in red counties could put them over the top.
Democrats say that for years, they all but ceded rural counties and even some exurbs to former President Donald Trump. Rural counties in states like Wisconsin and Nevada transformed into deep-red Trump territory and have been just about impenetrable to the left since 2016.
Harris campaign officials believe they have an opportunity with white moderate and blue-collar voters — among whom Harris may have softer appeal — by emphasizing Walz’s Midwest roots, military background, ties to labor, experience as a hunter and career as a football coach.
Harris, too, has signaled to those voters, leaning on her work as a prosecutor and her self-made biography as the immigrant daughter who worked at McDonald’s, then rose through the ranks to become vice president.
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