ERIE, Pennsylvania — Gov. Tim Walz‘s (D-MN) visit across Pennsylvania was heavy on dairy but light on interviews or interactions with the local press.
During his trip, Walz partook of milkshakes, cheese curds, and more milkshakes. But the only interview he did in Pennsylvania, during his photo ops in Lancaster, Moon Township, Fayette County, Pittsburgh, and Erie, was with a Michigan, not Pennsylvania, public radio station. It was an interview that revealed more about the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s worldview than anything he has to date — aside, perhaps, from his interview with CNN in which the former schoolteacher blamed “poor grammar” for his false claim that he carried weapons of war during his Army National Guard service.
Walz was stationed in Italy, nowhere near a war zone.
While Walz was in Pennsylvania on Thursday, a reporter for Michigan NPR asked how a Harris-Walz administration would handle the Israel-Hamas war, and Walz made reference to anti-Israel protesters in Michigan.
“I think those folks who are speaking out loudly in Michigan are speaking out for all the right reasons,” Walz told WCMU, which serves central and northern Michigan. “It’s a humanitarian crisis. It can’t stand the way it is, and we need to find a way that people can live together in this.”
Walz had begun the answer like this: “I think, first and foremost, what we saw on Oct. 7 was a horrific act of violence against the people of Israel. They have certainly, and the vice president said it, I’ve said it, have the right to defend themselves, and the United States will always stand by that.”
Walz did not mention Hamas in his answer, nor did he mention the American hostages still being held by Hamas, nor the hostages who were tortured and brutally murdered over the weekend, including U.S. citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Walz did say, according to the transcript, “We can’t allow what’s happened in Gaza to happen. The Palestinian people have every right to life and liberty themselves. We need to continue, I think, to put the leverage on to make sure we move towards a two-state solution.”
Walz started his trip to Pennsylvania on Wednesday by visiting the Lancaster County Democratic Committee field office with his daughter Hope. Reporter Alyssa Kratz noted he spoke for six to seven minutes and that he would not take questions from the local Lancaster media. Nor, she said, were local pool reporters allowed to put up microphones near Walz. When one local reporter shouted out a question, the reporters were told by the Walz campaign staff to “not disrupt the program.”
It is important to note that Walz was done talking with the campaign volunteers when reporters were told not to interrupt him.
Walz had stopped at the Cherry Hill Orchards in New Danville ahead of his brief remarks at the Democratic field office. There, too, he did not answer any questions from the press, but he did get a whoopie pie.
After his brief visit to Lancaster County, he flew to Pittsburgh, where he got a mint chocolate chip milkshake with his daughter at a Moon Township creamery, and then drove one hour and 40 minutes to a Fayette County farm. There were no gaggles for the press at the first stop, nor at the stop at the dairy farm located in ruby-red Fayette County, where Trump-Vance signs adorn almost every other home. According to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Ryan Deto, Walz ate cheese curds as he was told by the farm owners they were supportive of solar energy but not on productive farmland and that natural gas should be a resource that is tapped, not spurned. Both of those positions run counter to the preferences of many in the Democratic Party.
Farmers in Pennsylvania often receive generous royalties from natural gas wells on their property. In fact, more than $193 million in royalties have gone into subsidizing family farmers by helping them buy equipment, hire, or avoid debt.
This year, the Biden-Harris administration placed a pause on all liquefied natural gas exports that come from farms like this, hurting their bottom lines.
A statewide Pennsylvania poll conducted in March showed that 58% of Pennsylvania voters opposed the Biden-Harris LNG export moratorium. The poll also showed that 41% of voters were more likely to vote against President Joe Biden based on his suspending approvals for new facilities that export LNG, with only 22% of voters more likely to support him.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz said in their only interview with CNN that they now support hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” after years of vowing to shut the industry down. However, in the same breath, Harris also said her climate change values haven’t changed, with Walz nodding in agreement.
Walz then returned to Pittsburgh and prepared for his trip to Erie for a rally at the Highmark Amphitheater, but not before avoiding his press pool in the morning and eating at a local diner for breakfast. (It was a diner that former President Barack Obama favored so much in 2008 that it served pancakes during his inaugural celebrations.)
Pool reporter Aaron Pellish of CNN noted on X that he had to rely on a staffer at the restaurant for the details because, of course, Walz’s campaign was stiffing the media. Both Harris’s and Walz’s visits to western Pennsylvania in the past few weeks have been tightly controlled events, often invite-only, that are custom-made to come across as authentic, flawless, and generating enthusiasm among the voters. There has been no meaningful interaction with the local press.
But the refusal to discuss matters such as crime, homelessness, or the effect that inflation is having on Pennsylvanians’ budgets is more important than one might realize. The most important interaction a candidate can have is with a local reporter. Those journalists often are lifelong residents or have called the region they cover home for a very long time. They understand the challenges in the community and know their readers or viewers want to know how candidates would address them.
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By contrast, the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), has held over 94 interviews with local and national reporters. I watched him and his team in Erie take pointed questions from local reporters, as well as national reporters. That doesn’t make him better, but it does make him transparent. Whether you care for him or not, you know where he stands.
Local and national Democratic strategists tell me the Harris-Walz plan is to run out the clock with tightly orchestrated events and to avoid little to any contact with the press. They see this tactic as having little risk. They are banking that voters don’t want more from their presidential candidates. Time will tell if that is true. Meanwhile, if the journalism profession as a whole continues to allow this arrogance and lack of transparency from the Democratic ticket, without major public blowback, the profession will have furthered merited a lack of respect, influence, or trust from the public.