Kamala Harris chooses Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as running mate in U.S. presidential race
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her 2024 vice-presidential running mate.
Walz, 60, is a governor in a solidly Democratic state, but has proven that he appeals to rural, white voters, who in recent years have broadly voted for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“It is the honor of a lifetime to join @kamalaharris in this campaign. I’m all in,” wrote Walz on the social media platform X after the announcement on Tuesday.
“Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school. So, let’s get this done, folks! Join us,” he wrote, linking to the campaign’s donations page.
Pennsylvania Democratic strategist Mustafa Rashed said Harris needs to stay connected to the working-class, white male voters and moderates, which is what she will need to win the White House.
“I think [Walz’s] approval rating is really high. Republicans like him. He’s smart. He’s been around a long time. A lot of great relationships,” said Rashed.
While Minnesota is a dependably Democratic state, it is close to Wisconsin and Michigan, two crucial battlegrounds.
Walz helped label Republicans as ‘weird’
Walz was not initially considered a front runner for VP, but has recently proven he is a strong messenger, and helped label Trump and the Republicans as “just weird” in an interview last month. Democrats have seized on the message and amplified it since then.
During a fundraiser for Harris on Monday in Minneapolis, Walz said, “It wasn’t a slur to call these guys weird. It was an observation.”
Walz, who grew up in the small town of West Point, Neb., was a social studies teacher, football coach and union member at Mankato West High School in Minnesota before he got into politics. He also served in the U.S. Army National Guard for 24 years.
Walz flipped a Republican seat in rural Minnesota in 2006 to represent the state. He was viewed as a moderate Democrat who supported gun rights and was elected to Congress a total of six times before leaving the House to run for governor in 2018.
The Washington Post has reported that Walz’s views changed on gun laws that year after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The paper said he donated all the money he had ever received from the National Rifle Association to charity and pushed for background checks for gun owners.
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who was chosen by Donald Trump as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, says he wants to debate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the newly announced running mate to Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris.
“It’s true. I’m a veteran, a hunter, and a gun owner. But I’m also a dad. And for many years, I was a teacher. I know basic gun safety isn’t a threat to my rights. It’s about keeping our kids safe,” Walz wrote on X on July 27.
“I had an A rating from the NRA. Now I get straight F’s. And I sleep just fine,” he wrote.
Harris, the first woman and first Black and South Asian person to serve as vice-president, chose Walz after considering a field of finalists made up of white men with a record of winning over rural, white or independent voters.
Harris is expected to appear with Walz in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening.
Americans typically focus on the person at the top of the ticket when choosing whom to vote for, but vice-presidential candidates can help or hurt their running mates based on their backgrounds, home state popularity and ability to sway important constituencies or independent voters.
Trump VP pick off to rocky start
Trump’s vice-presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, has had a rocky start since joining the Republican ticket, with old comments criticizing “childless cat ladies” drawing unwelcome attention and potentially alienating women voters.
Vance will follow Harris and her new running mate to several swing states this week, the Trump campaign said, including stops in South Philadelphia on Tuesday and Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday. He plans to criticize Harris on economic issues and immigration.
“It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running mate,” said a statement from Trump and Vance’s campaign team.
“While Walz pretends to support Americans in the Heartland, when the cameras are off, he believes that rural America is ‘mostly cows and rocks,'” wrote Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign press secretary.
“Just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare,” the statement said.
Harris became the Democratic Party’s standard bearer after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign last month. Since then, she has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and recast the race against Trump with a boost of energy from her party’s base.
Published at Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:58:04 +0000
Tropical storm Debby floods parts of southeastern United States
Tropical storm Debby has moved into some of America’s most historic Southern cities, bringing prolonged downpours and flooding after slamming into Florida and prompting the rescue of hundreds.
Record-setting rain from the storm that killed at least five people in Florida and Georgia was causing flash flooding, with up to 64 centimetres possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory Tuesday morning.
“Hunker down,” Van Johnson, mayor of Savannah, Ga., told residents in a social media livestream Monday night. He warned people that Tuesday will likely be a “rough day.”
The storm’s centre was just southwest of Savannah early Tuesday, with maximum sustained winds near 75 km/h.
“Tropical cyclones always produce heavy rain, but normally as they’re moving, you know, it doesn’t accumulate that much in one place,” said Richard Pasch of the National Hurricane Center. “But when they move very slowly, that’s the worst situation.”
Tropical cyclones derive their energy from warm water, so Debby has weakened over land. But part of the circulation was interacting with water over the Atlantic, Pasch said. The storm’s centre is expected to move out over the water off the Georgia and South Carolina coast, then move back inland, so it could restrengthen Wednesday before it moves inland Thursday over South Carolina, he said.
More than 15 centimetres of rain had fallen through Monday at Savannah’s airport, and showed no signs of stopping Tuesday, the National Weather Service reported. That’s already a month’s worth of rain in a single day: In all of August 2023, the city got 14.1 centimetres of rain.
Flash flood warnings were issued in Savannah and Charleston, among other areas of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. Both Savannah and Charleston announced overnight curfews as the rains picked up. Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event.”
Charleston authorities said police were barricading all eight roads leading into the 350-year-old city built on a marshy peninsula, letting only essential workers and emergency personnel in and urging all non-residents to leave Monday night.
“We need people to make their way out. This is not something you can stay at the bar until 10:45. We need you to take this seriously,” Charleston Mayor William Cogswell said.
Charleston also opened parking garages so residents could park their cars above floodwaters and updated an online mapping system to show which roads are closed due to flooding.
A tornado touched down in Edisto Beach, S.C., Monday night, damaging homes and blowing down trees and power lines, the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office said on social media. No injuries were immediately reported there officials said.
The weather service continued issuing tornado warnings well into Monday night for parts of the state including Hilton Head Island.
5 dead, including children
Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Weakening winds made it a tropical storm again, but its slow forward movement and the the ocean water it picked up caused catastrophic in places.
About 500 people were rescued Monday from flooded homes in Sarasota, a beach city in Florida popular with tourists, the Sarasota Police Department announced. Just north of Sarasota, Manatee County officials said 186 people were rescued.
“Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said on social media.
Five people have died due to the storm as of Monday night, including a tractor trailer driver who lost control on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area, flipping over a concrete wall and dangling over the edge before the cab dropped into the water below. Sheriff’s office divers located the body of the 64-year-old man from Mississippi in the cab, 12 metres below the surface, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
A 13-year-old boy died when a tree fell on a mobile home southwest of Gainesville, Fla., and in Dixie County, near where Debby made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads. In South Georgia, a 19-year-old man died when a large tree fell onto a porch at a home in Moultrie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that Florida’s threat is far from over as waterways north of the state line fill up and flow south.
“It is a very saturating, wet storm,” DeSantis said. “When they crest and the water that’s going to come down from Georgia, it’s just something that we’re going to be on alert for not just throughout today, but for the next week.”
Thousands remain without power
More than 140,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Tuesday morning, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp. Nearly 12,000 more were without power in South Carolina early Tuesday.
More than 1,600 flights were also cancelled nationwide on Monday and more than 550 flights were cancelled early Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com.
President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations making federal disaster assistance available to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Vice-President Kamala Harris postponed a campaign stop scheduled for Thursday in Savannah.
North Carolina is also under a state of emergency after Gov. Roy Cooper declared it in an executive order signed Monday. Several areas along the state’s coastline are prone to flooding, such as Wilmington and the Outer Banks, according to the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.
Published at Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:30:20 +0000
