Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

The consensus view holds that the candidates for vice president have little impact on voter’s choices in a presidential election. I have no evidence to refute this. But I do have a kind of gut feeling that the people slated to fill the number two position on the ticket may have more influence than usual this time around.

And now we know who these candidates are. Republican Donald Trump picked JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio to be his running mate. We are told Vance prefers to be referenced by those two initials without periods. His name is just one attribute Vance has changed more than once over the years. He was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 1984.

Democrat Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. Harris, the current Vice President, surprised me with that choice. I would have thought she should pick from one of the swing states that could very well determine the outcome of the election. My list included Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina, Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, and Mark Kelly, senator of Arizona.

Vance points to his working-class roots. His claim to fame is the bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture, a story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a look at the struggles of America’s white working class. Critics observe that Vance moved on from that beginning to become a Yale Law–educated right-wing firebrand who spent six years at three different venture capital firms, then successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022. His political experience is limited to his current Senate term.

In 2016, Vance was a critic of Donald Trump. But as a politician he became a Trump sycophant. Just what Trump likes best. Vance aligns with traditional Republican views, advocating for limited government intervention, lower taxes, and a strong national defense. He has also expressed skepticism about climate change and supports expanding fossil fuel production.

Vance supports a national abortion ban. He also voted against the Right to IVF Act, which would have protected accessibility and affordability of in vitro fertilization (IVF) services nationwide. He called women without children “miserable cat ladies” and vilified working moms as bad parents who want to “shunt their kids into crap day care so they can enjoy more ‘freedom.’” For him, universal childcare amounts to “class war against normal people.” He calls for families without children to pay taxes at higher rates (the Tax Code already does that) and to wants to penalize people without children by reducing the power of their votes. Vance says, “when you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids.”

Walz, the Democratic candidate, boasts a more extensive political resume, having served as a Representative for Minnesota’s 1st congressional district from 2007 to 2019 and as the Governor of Minnesota since 2019. A two-term governor and chairman of the Democratic Governors Association until selected for the Veep job, Walz could be especially helpful in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan. He is already well known in western Wisconsin because it shares media markets with Minnesota, while Michigan has some economic and cultural similarities with the state he now governs.

After graduating in 1989 with a social-science degree from Chadron State College in Nebraska, Walz spent a year teaching in China before returning to full-time status at the National Guard and then a teaching career. He eventually landed about 80 miles southwest of Minneapolis in Mankato, Minn., where he taught social studies, coached high-school football and raised two children with his wife, Gwen Walz.

Walz wasn’t widely known outside of Minnesota before his name appeared on Harris shortlists. But he gained some Democratic fans outside his state in recent weeks for television interviews that hit at former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Vance, without being overly nasty. He called the pair “weird,” a word that went viral among Democrats.

Vance wasted no time in attacking Walz, but not on policy. Instead, Vance took shots at Walz’s military record, accusing the governor of “stolen valor,” a serious accusation for those who have worn the uniform. But fact-checkers looking into the details have concluded that, for the most part, Vance’s charges are without merit.

Walz served 24 years in the active and then reserve Army, then retired with a military pension. His reserve unit was deployed one year after Walz’s retirement, but no orders had been issued at the time Walz left the reserves to run for Congress. Vance served four years with the Marines, as a Marine journalist. Neither man saw combat, but each served their country honorably.

No better a conservative authority than the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote, “There are plenty of reasons to criticize Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, and we’ve told you about several. But the charges leveled so far about his military service look like ‘thin gruel.'”

The number two position on the ticket may not have much impact on the result, but it is already providing fireworks. Walz and Vance are expected to debate on October 1.

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