Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) are set to face off on the debate stage Tuesday evening, where they’ll have one of the biggest audiences to prove their mettle as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris‘s 2024 vice presidential picks.
Both men were selected for their Midwest credentials and ability to win over voters in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
As the author of the bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy, Vance has often talked about his family’s struggles in Appalachia, and Walz has garnered Democratic excitement for his work leading Minnesota while delivering on left-wing matters such as free breakfast and lunch for school children.
2024 VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: VANCE AND WALZ TO GO TOE-TO-TOE IN CBS CONTEST
However, political experts who spoke to the Washington Examiner were mixed about the effectiveness of the running mates.
“Both candidates have done an adequate job as VP nominees,” said national Republican strategist Brian Seitchik.
Walz tamps down the media interviews
Cayce Myers, a professor at Virginia Tech’s School of Communication, said Walz’s effectiveness “remains to be seen,” and Tuesday’s debate is one of the governor’s biggest chances to prove himself.
“On the whole, Walz has been an effective person at communicating her platform,” Myers said of the Democratic ticket. “I don’t know that he has the media savvy necessarily of some other candidates. I think that his experience has been in statewide elections and so this is a totally different realm for a candidate.”
Walz excited Democrats with his penchant for branding Vance, Trump, and the GOP as “weird” and his folksy midwestern dad persona during Harris’s truncated vice presidential tryout over the summer. His humble persona helped catapult him over other candidates, such as Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), who has the benefit of being a popular leader of a must-win swing state.
However, since joining the ticket, Walz has embraced Harris’s decision to limit interviews with the media. Yet his popularity has not suffered, said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
“I think Walz has sort of a grandfatherly charm, a folksy charm, which plays well in the northern swing states,” said Bannon.
Recent New York Times/Siena College polls of voters in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin showed Walz is more popular than Vance. The governor had a 44% favorability rating and a 41% unfavorability rating, while Vance had a 42% favorability rating and a 48% unfavorability rating.
The polls also showed that 49% of voters said Walz was “honest and trustworthy” compared to the 45% who said the same about Vance.
Republican strategist Steven Hilding also pointed to Walz’s outsider status as a humanizing factor to counter Harris’s stereotype as a San Francisco liberal.
“It’s hard for Harris to kind of be the relatable person when, at least in all of modern time, she’s had some, I would say, famous boyfriends,” Hilding said, referring to Harris’s ex-boyfriend, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.” [Harris] has been very involved in the political scene. Walz can at least be considered a little more of an outsider.”
Vance goes on the offense
Unlike Walz, the Ohio senator has been more willing to engage with the media, often taking questions from local and national journalists when campaigning in the battleground states.
Vance typically uses these moments to act as Trump’s proverbial attack dog, calling out Harris and Walz for dodging the media.
“How is she going to sit in a room with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping?” said Vance of Harris during a Raleigh, North Carolina, rally earlier this month. “How is she going to sit in a room with the adversaries of America if she won’t even sit down for a friendly media interview? She can’t do it, and we can’t trust anybody who’s so afraid of her own people that she won’t give an interview to actually represent those people on the world stage.”
Hilding also pointed out that unlike Trump, who has been wealthy for most of his life, Vance brings a more populist persona to the campaign.
“I think he also has some of that kind of common man thing going for him,” he said, pointing to Vance’s background. “Hillbilly Elegy has been, once again, a bestseller book. It’s been popular again on Netflix, so again, I think he also brings that kind of common man aspect that Trump might not necessarily have.”
At 78 years old, Trump’s decision to tap Vance as his running mate ultimately marked the senator as the inheritor of the Make America Great Again movement in 2028 and beyond.
“But I think in terms of expectations, he hasn’t done anything to really pull Trump ahead,” said Myers. “He hasn’t done anything to drag him down either. It’s similar to Walz. It’s sort of a wash at this point.”
Will the vice presidential debate matter?
Several strategists who spoke with the Washington Examiner were skeptical that Tuesday’s debate, hosted by CBS News in New York, would change the presidential race.
“I’m frankly not sure that the vice presidential debate next week is going to matter at all,” said Seitchik. “The only vice presidential debate that I can even recall of significance was 1992 when Admiral Stockdale, Ross Perot’s VP pick, opened with: who am I and what am I doing here? Beyond that, vice presidential debates are pretty meaningless and pretty forgettable.”
“I don’t think the VP pick makes a difference,” added Matt Dole, a Republican political consultant based in Ohio.
“I don’t think Dan Quayle made a difference. I don’t think Bob Dole made a difference,” continued Dole, referring to former President George H.W. Bush’s 1988 running mate and former President Gerald Ford’s vice presidential choice in 1976, respectively.
The Republican strategist said, at this point in the race, voters are likely focused on what they think about the two leaders atop the presidential tickets.
“What do you believe about Donald Trump? What do you believe about Harris? It’s just so locked into the top of the ticket,” said Dole. “So the VP candidates, both of them frankly, are just on the periphery trying to sort of nip away some votes.”
However, Myers pointed to the lack of more presidential debates between Trump and Harris as an example of why the vice presidential debate may be more consequential this time around.
“I think that it’s going to be an aggressive debate, and I think that both sides are going to come to the debate really advocating for their candidates in a way that is more of an attack debate between the two,” said Myers.
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Experts expect Vance will likely slam Walz over his National Guard record and Harris’s flip-flops on policy matters such as fracking, while Walz is expected to hit Vance over Trump’s mixed record appealing to suburban women voters and Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comments.
“It’s not likely to be a decisive event in the campaign, but it definitely has some drama in it that makes it worth watching and paying attention to,” said Bannon.