It's been a tough couple of weeks for JD Vance, the Ohio senator who former President Donald Trump chose as his running mate in his quest to retake the White House. The rumor mill within Republican circles is suggesting that Trump may not only be regretting his pick, but is even mulling over swapping him out for someone else.
But things could get a lot worse in short order for Vance—and for Trump who, mulling aside, is pretty much saddled with his VP pick at this point. If Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat's de facto nominee for president, ends up selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, as many seasoned political observers project she will, JD Vance is in for a real drubbing.
The plain-speaking, pulls no-punches Minnesota governor is just the type of guy who can legitimately call out the hollow lip service Vance purports to pay to rural voters and small town America. Unlike Vance, who made a name for himself in politics by exploiting his Appalachia roots to galivant across America as equal parts media starlet and tech-bro, Walz is the real deal. Born in a town of 400 in rural Nebraska, the former social studies teacher, championship high school football coach, and retired army reservist, knows how to "speak farm" and can connect with white, small-town America in a way that is antithetical to the "dystopian nonsense" that Vance has spewed about America's agricultural regions both in his memoire, Hillbilly Elegy, and while stumping on the campaign trail.
In fact, it's not hard to see Tim Walz as the very guy who, if selected as Harris' VP pick, could effectively turn Vance's Hillbilly Elegy into Vance's very own hillbilly political eulogy.
"People like JD Vance know nothing about small town America," Walz said on a recent morning news interview. "He gets it all wrong. It's not about hate. ... The golden rule [in small town America] is mind your own damn business." In a separate media appearance, Walz took aim at Vance's best-seller: "[Vance] misreads this, in Hillbilly Elegy, about how there's some type of cultural angst, or whatever. No: We're angry because robber barons like him gutted Middle America."
Mic drop.
Perhaps most famously, Walz popularized the term "weird," making it the catch-phrase of the '24 election—an utterly simple term that so clearly sums up and adjectivizes Trump, Vance, and the far-out, far-right policies that the Minnesota governor claims no one in the Heartland is remotely concerned about. "Who's asking for this crazy stuff?" asked Walz rhetorically when referring to GOP plans to raise insulin prices, curtail women's reproductive rights, ban books, and claw back benefits for veterans. Walz's "weird" zeitgeist has since been memeified into countless TikToks that are generating millions of views.
If Walz is tapped to be Harris' running mate, the contrast between the Minnesota governor and JD Vance would be stark and unmistakable. Unlike Vance, who was seemingly chosen by Trump solely for his ability to regurgitate MAGA gospel and serve red meat to Trump's base, Walz is the ultimate crossover candidate, bringing a proven ability to win over moderate voters.
Walz successfully ran for a House seat in 2006 in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District—long-considered a GOP bastion—and went on to be re-elected five more times. As a twice-elected governor in Minnesota—a purplish state that has regularly alternated between Republican, Democratic, and Independent governors over the past 50 years—Walz has been lauded for his ability to pass a progressive agenda despite having to deal with a divided state legislature for most of his tenure.
As far as retail political skills are concerned, it's almost an unfair comparison. Whereas Vance has been derided for his stilted delivery of gloom and doom, Walz is the diametric opposite—he is a true people person, in the most authentic way possible. I saw this first-hand when I interviewed him for Newsweek in the school cafeteria of Webster Elementary School in Northeast Minneapolis a few months ago, the same place where he had signed his universal free school meals bill into law the previous year. (Check out the clips at end of my video interview when one can clearly see the pure joy Walz had in jawing it up with a diverse array of students in the lunchroom.)
In many ways, Walz is the consummate interlocutor for the Harris campaign to connect with Middle America. He is the perfect yang to Harris' yin. If the Trump campaign aims to paint Harris as an out-of-touch coastal elite from San Francisco, Walz's "Flyover Country" bona fides are unassailable—a reality with which JD Vance might soon have to contend.
Arick Wierson is a six-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and served as a senior media and political adviser to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He lives in Minneapolis, Minn. and advises corporate clients on communications strategies in the United States, Africa, and Latin America.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
