With less than two weeks to go until the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris’ choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate is something of a shock, and Republican strategists have suggested it could hurt her in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, where Governor Josh Shapiro was considered the front-runner.
“Kamala Harris didn’t choose Josh Shapiro because anti-Semitic progressives don’t like him because he’s Jewish,” Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Mike Berg said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “In her first major decision as a candidate, she has caved in to the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party.”
Berg also said Walz would “strengthen” Harris’ “biggest weaknesses: crime and immigration.”
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, criticized for ‘remarkable lack of leadership’ during coronavirus and riots
With less than two weeks to go until the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate is something of a shock. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
“Kamala Harris promoted the Minnesota Freedom Fund and helped fund the 2020 Minnesota riots. Walz burned Minnesota. Kamala Harris supported decriminalizing illegal immigration and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while Walz supported making Minnesota a sanctuary state,” he said.
Earlier this week, decades-old articles resurfaced in which Shapiro wrote about volunteering in the Israeli army and disparaged Palestinians. The Philadelphia Inquirer uncovered an essay that Shapiro wrote for the Campus Times, the student newspaper at the University of Rochester, where he graduated in 1995. In the piece, Shapiro emphasized his view that “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully” because “they do not have the capacity to build and succeed in building their own homeland, even with Israeli and American help.”
Both of Harris’ running mates have flaws that could knock them out of the race.
Walz will accompany Harris on a multi-state campaign tour over the next few days, touring key battleground states. (Elisabeth Franz/Reuters)
Strategists have speculated that Harris was preparing to nominate Shapiro until his resurfaced op-ed, which may have alienated some of the party’s progressive base who believe an Israeli ceasefire would end Palestinian casualties.
“That’s 100% why she essentially sacrificed carrying Pennsylvania for the campaign and made a big push to retain the Senate seat in Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania has three congressional swing seats that Shapiro could win in a landslide in 2022,” a House Republican strategist said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
“All of this would have been ignored by the Republicans, but Trump’s pro-Israel stance effectively made him ineligible for the position, and she caved to the far-left, pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party,” the strategist said.
Walz will accompany Harris on a multistate campaign tour over the next few days as she seeks to recast herself as a moderate candidate and distance herself from her past progressive positions.
Trump campaign says ‘dangerously liberal’ Harris-Waltz pairing is ‘every American’s nightmare’
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is considered the leading candidate to be Kamala Harris’ running mate.
“This move appears to be focused on solidifying the progressive base of the Democratic Party,” Nate Benefield, senior vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, told Fox News Digital.
“I don’t know if their running mate choice will be a seismic change nationally, but it could make a difference by a few points in Pennsylvania,” Benefield said. “I think that shows that their decision is aimed at energizing their progressive base, not battleground states.”
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Meanwhile, in response to Harris’ attempt to appear more moderate by launching a Republican supporters’ group this week, Benefield said, “These progressive ideas have been around for a long time and have had no appeal to voters in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”
Waltz, 60, a former Army National Guardsman and teacher, has emerged in recent weeks as an effective defender of Harris. He grew up in small town Nebraska and was a high school football coach and union worker in Minnesota before entering politics. He recently attacked former President Trump and running mate J.D. Vance as “wackos,” a favorite insult of the Harris campaign.
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Walz, a former congressman from a Republican-leaning district, has proven popular with rural white voters but as governor he also pushed for progressive policies such as free school lunches and expanded paid leave for workers. Minnesota is overwhelmingly Democratic but is close to key battleground states Wisconsin and Michigan.
Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken, Andrew Mark Miller and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
