Arab American community, major unions encouraged Harris's choice of Walz as running mate
EAU CLAIRE, Wis.: Arab American communities and key union leaders across the Midwest said Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris made the right choice in choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in November.
Some Michigan Democratic leaders have worried that choosing the wrong running mate could slow their momentum and fracture a coalition that has only recently begun to come together following President Joe Biden’s momentous decision to withdraw from the race and concede to Harris.
Walz's nomination eased some tensions, sending a signal to some leaders that Harris had heard concerns about Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was being considered as a vice presidential candidate, and who they felt was overly supportive of Israel.
“The party recognizes that there is a coalition that needs to be rebuilt,” said Abdullah Hamud, the mayor of Dearborn, Mich. “Selecting Walz is another gesture of good will.”
Harris and Walz spent their first full day together campaigning across the Midwest on Wednesday, and they got a unique glimpse of how competitive the race could be when they faced Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on a Wisconsin tarmac.
Democrats are visiting Wisconsin and Michigan in an effort to woo young, diverse and labor-friendly voters who were instrumental in President Joe Biden's victory in 2020.
“As Tim Walz points out, we are the happy warriors,” Harris said at her first rally in Eau Claire. Contributing to that sentiment, Harris’s campaign said it raised $36 million in the first 24 hours after announcing Walz as her running mate.
The vice president said the two men, unlike former President Donald Trump, looked to the future with optimism. She accused the former president of being stuck in the past and favoring a confrontational style of politics, even though she herself has criticized her opponent.
“Anyone who suggests that the Constitution of the United States should never again sit behind the head of the United States,” Harris said, her voice rising as the crowd of more than 12,000 applauded, according to her campaign.
The shift in campaigning on Wednesday was particularly significant for her and Walz, as Biden’s winning coalition four years ago showed signs of weakening over the summer, especially in Michigan, a state where Democratic divisions are centered over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Speaking at a Democratic rally in Wisconsin ahead of Harris, Walz had some harsh words for Vance, but most of his sharpest words were directed at Trump, who the former president said “made a mockery of our laws, created confusion and division among our country, and not to mention what he has done as president.”
Republicans have sought to portray Harris and Walz as too liberal for the Midwest, with Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson saying on a conference call that Walz is “part of the radical, crazy left, just like Vice President Harris.”
Growing passion
But since Harris announced her candidacy and chose Waltz as her running mate, Democratic support has skyrocketed.
“We love Joe. Joe has been an incredible president, but he is an unprecedented messenger. And sometimes you need a better messenger,” said Dan Miller, a Pelican Lake, Wis., native who attended the Wallace-Harris rally. “And that’s Kamala.”
That trend could be decisive in Detroit, where blacks make up nearly 80 percent of the population, and where leaders have warned administration officials for months that voter apathy could cost the party a stronghold in the city.
The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP chapter, said the excitement in the city right now was “tremendous.” He compared it to when Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008, when voters waited in long lines to elect the nation’s first black president.
But some Michigan Democratic leaders feared that choosing the wrong running mate could slow the momentum and fracture the coalition that had only recently begun to coalesce.
Arab-American leaders, who have significant influence in the greater Detroit area, have been vocal in their opposition to Shapiro because of his past comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The leaders specifically pointed to comments he made earlier this year about protests on college campuses, which they felt unfairly compared the actions of student protesters to those of white supremacists. Shapiro, who is Jewish, is a staunch supporter of Israel but has also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Osama Shiblani, publisher of Arab American News, based in Dearborn, and a prominent leader in Michigan's large Muslim community, was one of those who met with White House adviser Tom Perez in Michigan last week.
Perez has been in the state on official business, but has kept in touch with some Dearborn leaders since Biden and other top officials visited Dearborn to try to rebuild ties with the community.
Sibley said he met with Perez for more than an hour on July 29 and told him that if Harris chose Shapiro, future talks would be “cut off.”
“Not picking Shapiro is a very good move. It opens the door a little bit more for us,” said Shiblani, who stressed that any meaningful dialogue with Hammoud must include policy discussions.
Duel Schedule
Trump also focused on appealing to voters in the Midwest, choosing Ohio Republican Senator Vance as his running mate. Vance parenthetically endorsed the Harris-Wales ticket during his appearances in Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday.
Because their schedules overlapped, as Harris was greeting Girl Scouts arriving at the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport in Wisconsin, Vance's campaign plane landed nearby and taxied along the runway in the distance.
At about the same time that Vance disembarked from the plane, Harris took a group photo with the girls and began walking toward Air Force Two, accompanied by his security detail.
The vice president eventually got into her motorcade, which departed before they could interact. Still, the fact that the two were so close on the runway was unusual given the carefully planned nature of the campaign schedule.
“I just wanted to check out my future flight,” Vance later told reporters, meaning he and Trump would travel on Air Force Two in November if they are elected. He also criticized Harris for not taking questions from reporters, though she sometimes answers shouted questions as she boards or exits campaign flights.
Vance later told the crowd at the Eau Claire event, “We just saw the vice president's plane,” and joked about the reporters traveling with him, saying, “I thought Kamala Harris must be lonely because she's not taking questions.”
“If they want to call me weird, I call it a badge of honor,” Vance said, responding to a nickname Walz used to describe him that made the Minnesota governor popular online in the days before Harris nominated him as her running mate.
