Tim Walz, a ‘snowman melting,’ tests his appeal in the Sun Belt

When Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, many Democrats hoped that his folksy charm, quick-witted jabs at Republican opponents and “Minnesota nice” values would draw in white, working-class voters from across the Midwest — and potentially beyond.

That theory has been put to the test in recent weeks as Walz has hit the campaign trail, embracing his role as a retail politician and attack dog against former President Donald Trump at stops not only in the blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but also in Sun Belt battleground states like Arizona and Nevada. This week, he will head south to campaign in Georgia and North Carolina.

“I feel a bit like a snowman melting,” Walz said at several stops during a sweltering campaign swing in the Southwest last week, a line that drew chuckles from college students in Tempe, Arizona, and wealthy donors in Las Vegas alike.

As he has traveled through the nation’s battlegrounds, Walz has worked to overcome skepticism from moderate voters about Minnesota’s leftward shift by presenting liberal policy priorities like student debt relief and housing tax credits as common-sense, neighborly goals. And across the Sun Belt in particular, he has had to try to shore up support among a much younger and more racially diverse electorate — traditionally Democratic groups with whom Republicans have been making inroads in recent elections.

On the trail, where he has worked to pump up the Democratic base at events and to rally the faithful with visits to campaign offices, he often works to forge connections with his audiences, and individual voters, with a down-to-earth demeanor and a dose of humor.

At a campaign office in Phoenix, he laughed with a volunteer from Minnesota as they commiserated about the triple-digit temperatures. At an office for a Democratic group in Lansing, Michigan, he marveled at the endless stream of volunteers emerging from a room to shake his hand.

“That’s either a big room or it’s a clown car,” Walz said.

A moment later a volunteer introduced himself as “part of the clown car,” prompting Walz to respond, “We all are!”

Voters appear to especially enjoy that the governor seems very food-oriented.

In Las Vegas, he dropped by Tiabi Coffee and Waffle and ordered a peanut butter banana smoothie. In Wausau, Wisconsin, he drew laughs from a crowd when he explained that the owners of a local Ukrainian bakery had just sold him cake “that I probably don’t need but I sure wanted.” Walz and his daughter, Hope, loaded up on whoopie pies and cider doughnuts during a visit to an orchard in Pennsylvania.

Republicans have suggested that Walz’s policies are out of touch with the majority of the electorate, and he has faced early questions about how well his appeal would translate outside Minnesota.

At rallies, Trump has taken to calling him “Tampon Tim,” accusing him of signing a law to place tampons and pads in boys’ restrooms for transgender students. While the law was written by Democratic lawmakers to guarantee access to the products for “all menstruating students,” schools have interpreted the law as a mandate to place tampons and pads in female and gender neutral bathrooms, rather than ones designated only for boys.

Stan Barnes, a former Republican state lawmaker and political consultant in Arizona, suggested Walz was focusing on aspects of his personality to distract from his left-leaning record.

“They are trying to convince voters that they are a likable, normal alternative,” Barnes said. But he added that Trump, if polling proved accurate, had appeared to be appealing to racial minorities in a way no other Republican in the state had done before.

Several political strategists, though, suggested Walz’s plain-spoken language and appeal to Midwestern values would most likely help him, even in diverse Sun Belt battlegrounds.

“We talk about white working-class voters and Latino working-class voters and Black working-class voters,” said Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Nevada’s powerful Culinary Workers Union, a key ally for Democrats. “But working-class voters have a lot in common — they all want more money in their pocket.”

At stops in the Midwest and the East, Walz continued to make explicit appeals to young people and minorities, sometimes acknowledging his perspective as the older white man in the room. Speaking to Michigan State University students in East Lansing, Michigan, last week, Walz addressed Harris’ debate performance.

“Kamala Harris did her job the other night,” Walz said. “The thing I want to say to everybody in here — especially to women and people of color — the folks who are surprised she did that, shame on them.”

And in Washington, at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group, Walz described himself as an “old, straight white guy” who was working to guarantee that Americans could live as their “authentic selves” without interference from government.

The most emotional moment came when Walz recalled working on federal hate-crimes legislation when he was serving in Congress and meeting Judy Shepard, whose son, Matthew, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, had been beaten, tortured and left to die in 1998.

“I remember walking with a mother who lost her son and hearing the sheriff tell me the only place it wasn’t bloody was where the tears ran down Matthew’s eyes,” he said, drawing gasps from the audience. “And I watched a mother in unbelievable pain that I couldn’t even fathom — of losing a child this way — walk with her head held high to make sure that none of the rest of us ever have to get a call from someone.”

Some of the people he met along the trail said that his words had resonated with them. Alexandria Jimenez-Greenshields, a 17-year-old student at Michigan State who attended Walz’s event there, said he seemed genuinely interested in making a connection with people.

“He was speaking from passion — it didn’t feel fake,” she said.

“It felt like he was a normal average person,” she added, “just having a normal average conversation.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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