The rise of the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket filled an already chaotic campaign year with “brat” and “weird” and flipped the Democratic Party’s misery into a cautious euphoria.
Now, the pair has 11 weeks to sell voters on what a Harris-Walz administration might actually mean.
There are areas where the duo are effectively in lockstep on the Democratic Party’s top issues, including abortion rights: The vice president has made abortion a pillar of her nascent campaign, and the Walz family’s personal experience with in vitro fertilization is a chance to further pitch reproductive health care as an issue that men should be weighing in November, too.
But after four years of working in President Joe Biden’s shadow, Harris is still reintroducing herself to voters outside of her native California, making her earlier policy positions newly relevant even as, on some issues, she breaks with her party’s left flank.
Walz, the Minnesota governor, is meant to serve as a complement to Harris — particularly as she and former President Donald Trump make a play for labor unions loyal to Biden.
But the policy positions where Harris and Walz remain somewhat ambiguous opens a lane for Trump and other Republicans to frame their new competition in front of voters before candidates can.
Here’s a crash course on where the Harris-Walz ticket stands on many of the top issues today, how their policies may play with voters and whether they are becoming the target of GOP attacks.
The Economy
For many voters, the contest between Harris and Trump is centrally about which candidate will generate the biggest financial boost.
Battered by years of soaring prices, hefty credit card payments and a dour housing market, Americans are hyperfixated on what the 2024 race means for the economy and whether the incoming president can alleviate some of the financial strain felt in the last four years.
Harris has managed to avoid much of the economic scrutiny that hung over Biden’s campaign, and a recent poll showed that the vice president is quickly gaining voters’ trust on the economy. On Friday, she began rolling out her economic plans in a speech focused on lowering costs for everyday Americans while calling on Congress to ban price gouging by food corporations.
That message echoes a broader push among Democrats who see “care economy” issues as a way to appeal to voters across the political spectrum. It’s also one that dovetails with Walz’s record in Minnesota.
In St. Paul, Walz, whose appeal among working-class voters and in the Midwest was a draw for the Harris campaign, has spent the last several years focused on tackling everyday expenses. He enacted legislation guaranteeing paid family and medical leave and providing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits to Minnesota parents, while also moving to expand affordable housing options. Harris has backed similar proposals before.
But the economy is still an overhang for Democrats heading into their Chicago conclave this week: While inflation has eased, unemployment ticked up unexpectedly in July, and most Americans think the U.S. is in a recession — and Trump is leaning into the idea. At a campaign stop last week, the former president claimed a Harris presidency would send financial markets and the economy reeling into “a 1929-style depression.”
Abortion and IVF
When Biden exited the race last month, Harris was quick to pivot the campaign to an issue that has consistently rallied voters behind Democrats in recent years: abortion.
The vice president had already established herself as a leading and forceful voice on reproductive rights within the administration after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. But Harris’ decision to take a more moderate position on abortion access once she was atop the ticket made her running mate’s record on the issue more important for the party base.
In 2019, she called for protections that would go further than Roe by limiting state restrictions on abortion. But the Harris campaign has said she now backs the Biden stance of restoring Roe, which protected abortion until the point of fetal viability.
Walz has a long track record of protecting reproductive rights. Last year, he signed legislation codifying the right to abortion — a point that the Harris campaign called out shortly after the vice president named Walz as her running mate. And in March, Harris and Walz visited a Planned Parenthood health center in what marked the first time that a sitting vice president or president had been to a clinic that provides abortions.
The Minnesota governor has a personal stake in protecting reproductive rights beyond abortion. He and his wife used IVF to conceive their two children, which Walz has incorporated into his stump speech on the campaign trail.
Polling shows that a majority of Americans support preserving access to IVF and abortions in most cases.
But opposition to IVF among religious conservatives and other anti-abortion activists has created fractures within the Republican Party that Walz can keep hammering as anti-family. The issue became a factor in the race for the White House after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law — a ruling that has knocked many Republicans on their heels.
Labor
Harris has wasted no time trying to lock down the union vote ahead of November. Her pitch: Expect more of the same.
The labor movement has enjoyed an unequivocally union-centric agenda from the Biden administration, and Harris is making clear in calls with union heads and in campaign stops that she plans to carry it on if she’s elected. So far, the outreach has paid off with endorsements. Yet, whether rank-and-file workers — many of which support Trump — follow suit is still unclear.
The vice president has a long track record with organized labor that dates back to her time as attorney general in California. In the White House, she chaired a task force on worker empowerment, a panel that seeks to cut down barriers for organizing workers. And United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero recently credited Harris for quickly pushing through heat protections for outdoor workers this summer.
Adding Walz, who has cultivated a union-friendly record as governor, to the ticket can only help.
Unions are a central part of the Democratic Party’s base in the upper Midwest, which was critical to Biden’s win in 2020. And Walz has plenty to brag about for that crowd, particularly because so much of his labor agenda echoes Biden’s. Last year, he signed a law banning new noncompete agreements — effectively barring companies from restricting workers’ ability to jump to certain competitors. Unions have also cheered Walz’s moves to expand paid leave and prevent employers from forcing workers to listen to anti-union messages on company time.
“The folks in the Midwest needed somebody that looked like an autoworker or a steelworker, and that’s what Tim Walz is,” Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist, recently told POLITICO. “Somebody to get back those Joe Biden voters.”
The Environment
After worrying that Biden might be too much of a moderate on a range of issues, the left had to respect his environmental legacy once he signed a historic climate change law two years ago. However, that record — and Harris’ now-reversed support for a ban on fracking — has also alienated some of voters in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, an opening Trump and other Republicans have sought to exploit.
That has made Walz the more convincing pragmatist on the Democratic ticket.
Some Democrats had aggressively pushed for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to run with Harris, citing how his support for his home state’s fossil fuel industry would ease concerns among labor unions. But Walz, who represented a historically conservative district in Congress, has a far more mixed record on environmental policy than the headlines from his progressive governorship would indicate.
In Congress, for instance, Walz was rarely seen as an environmental champion by his colleagues and voted to complete the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. As governor, Walz has riled up some environmentalists who argue his administration should be moving to halt mining development in his state.
Harris is also facing questions from the left about how she might differentiate herself from Biden, including his climate agenda. One area that’s surfaced is Harris’ long, vocal advocacy for Black, Hispanic and impoverished communities that have been exposed to outsized levels of pollution.
As San Francisco district attorney in the mid-2000s, Harris stood up an environmental justice unit and sponsored legislation on the issue while serving in the Senate. As vice president, she also helped secure $15 billion for replacing lead drinking water pipes as part of Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, POLITICO has reported.
And despite his positions on mining, an issue that’s become more prominent as nations scramble to obtain the critical minerals needed for green technology, environmental groups have broadly lauded Harris’ pick of running mate. The Minnesota governor was a forceful advocate for car pollution standards akin to California’s and a requirement for zero-carbon power by 2040.
Trump and his allies have, in turn, attempted to frame Walz as a lefty pick who will back policies that ultimately force jobs out of the U.S.
Taxes
While Harris has previously championed progressive tax policies as has her running mate, the vice president has already made clear that she has no intention of hiking taxes for most Americans.
Days after becoming the presumptive nominee, the Biden-turned-Harris campaign quickly announced that Harris would — like Biden — not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year if elected.
The strategy is a move to bolster support from many of the same blue-collar voters that were critical to Biden’s win in 2020 — and a crucial one because of the lingering anxieties voters have about the economy.
In some cases, Harris is even calling for tax cuts. The vice president, most notably, has backed a plan first floated by Trump to end federal tax on tips, despite widespread skepticism among economists and the staggering costs of enacting the idea. Harris threw her weight behind the plan while speaking in Las Vegas, where such a ban could play well with Latino voters in particular.
But Harris’ and Walz’s records suggest that, if elected, their administration could look to tax policy as a means for financing some of their biggest plans — an opening for Republicans to blast the pair as classic tax-and-spend liberals.
Under Walz, Minnesota adopted what are widely seen as some of the most progressive tax policies in the country. Minnesota’s child tax credit, for instance, was financed by hundreds of billions of dollars that were raised through a new tax on multinational corporations like 3M, which is based in St. Paul. His broader $3 billion tax package also expanded credits for K-12 education expenses and cut taxes for Social Security recipients.
Agriculture
California may be the nation’s biggest agricultural-producing state, but Harris never made the farmlands a tentpole of her political career.
Walz, on the other hand, has done exactly that.
Over the course of six terms in Congress, the Nebraska native served on the House Agriculture Committee and helped craft the ever-critical farm bill in 2008, 2014 and 2018. And as governor of Minnesota — the sixth largest ag-producing state — Walz green-lighted legislation to expand rural broadband access and legalized adult-use cannabis, a move that he has said was critical for improving the state’s economy.
Agriculture policy is not high on many voters’ lists of priorities heading to the polls, but its ripple effects on food prices, energy and the economy are. Democrats are hoping that Walz’s focus on the rural Midwest — coupled with his folksy demeanor, resume and media chops — will further endear him among voters in communities that have felt left behind by the Democratic Party in recent years and overwhelmingly turned out for Trump. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) recently said Walz’s “ability just to be real” is a key strength for the ticket.
“Is he going to convert hardcore Republicans? Probably not,” Mark Liebow, a local Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party official who first met Walz in 2006, said in a recent interview with POLITICO. “Is he going to motivate Democrats and people who were on the sidelines, in the ‘meh’ category before? Yes.”
Israel and China
Harris is enjoying more support than Biden among young voters who see her as a better messenger on Israel’s war with Hamas, but she continues to face pressure from her party’s left flank over continued U.S. support for Israel.
Walz could help reassure those voters that her administration would take a more empathetic approach to the conflict than Biden.
Some critics of U.S. support for Israel said they felt hopeful upon Walz’s selection. While Walz condemned the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, he has also called on Democrats to engage with the concerns of “uncommitted” voters.
“Walz is a movable target. I think that we can elicit some more wins from him,” Asma Mohammed, a pro-Palestinian organizer, said in a recent interview.
Harris also lacks the military bona fides that can ease lingering doubts about a candidate’s national security chops. But Walz, a veteran who built a reputation on Capitol Hill as an advocate for better benefits for service members, could help balance that out and allow the Harris campaign to make inroads with military families.
Republicans have dug into Walz’s military record looking to neutralize that effect. Many of them are criticizing the timing of his retirement from the Army National Guard, ahead of his unit’s deployment to Iraq, and pointing out past inaccuracies in how Walz and the Harris campaign have described Walz’s military service.
Walz’s personal ties to China and past statements about the U.S.-China relationship have already spawned Republican attacks that the Minnesota Democrat is too conciliatory towards Beijing — a favorite target of Trump’s. Some Republicans have also insinuated that Walz, who taught English in China shortly after graduating college and organized trips for student groups to the country with his wife, will further Chinese interests if elected vice president.
Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed to this report.
