'All gas. No brakes!': Tim Walz takes a post-debate swing through Central Pennsylvania

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, fresh off surviving what might have been the single most fraught night of his vice presidential run, brought the Kamala Harris campaign back to swing state Pennsylvania Wednesday.

While the vice president was touring parts of Georgia ravaged by Hurrican Helene, Walz led something of a mini-Democratic insurgency in heavily-Republican York County, rallying midstate supporters at the York Fairgrounds.

Making an entrance at the UPMC Arena by bounding off a custom-wrapped Harris Walz coach bus that entered from behind the crowd and dropped him off stage-side, Walz took a stage flanked by a truckload of hay bales on one side and two older-model tractors on the other.

Then, speaking like a man who has read the news clips, Walz tore into his Republican opponent JD Vance’s failure during the Tuesday night vice presidential debate to acknowledge President Joe Biden victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Walz, who had his own stumbles in the debate, has apparently decided to try this out for size as his own “You’re No Jack Kennedy” moment that also brings up one of the biggest anchors on former President Donald Trump’s campaign: The protracted efforts to cling to power after his 2020 defeat, culminating in the Jan. 06, 2021 attacks by pro-Trump mobs at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s vice president at the time, Mike Pence, refused Trump’s requests to try to halt the Senate’s certification of the Electoral College votes that day.

“There is a reason Mike Pence is not on that (vice presidential) stage any longer,” Walz said Wednesday, after referring to Vance’s response to a question about the 2020 vote. “Mike Pence did his duty. He honored his oath. And he chose the Constitution over Donald Trump.”

“Understand…. With that damning non-answer, Senator Vance made it clear he will always make a different choice than Mike Pence made. And as I said then and I will say now, that should be absolutely disqualifying if you’re asking to be the vice president of the United States of America.”

Part of the rationale behind Walz’s selection to the Democratic ticket was to balance Harris’s California progressive creds with a centrist, Midwestern teacher-type who has a track record of needing to reach voters who aren’t necessarily from the same party.

Walz leaned into that man-in-the-middle back story Wednesday touting his work as a Congressman on bipartisan issues like the federal farm bills and creating programs to provide targeted federal disaster relief to rural communities like some of those affected this week by Helene.

It’s the same kind of practical government he said a would-be Harris Administration wants to bring to Washington, one that is less worried about a voters’ personal choices and more worried about their personal opportunities.

It was also Walz’s way, on this day, to open a door to any disaffected Republican voters who might be weary of Trump.

In a place like York, that could be huge in the overall race for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes.

In the last two presidential elections, Trump won York County by vote margins approaching 60,000.

He needs to replicate that to have a chance of winning Pennsylvania in 2024; the Harris ticket would ideally like to cut that margin to something more like the 40,000-vote gap between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012.

On that point, Walz said that in his view one of the best things that could happen as the result of a Harris election would be the evolution of a post-Trump Republican Party.

“Look, the Republican Party has added much to this country,” Walz said. “We need them back again because that Republican Party used to talk about freedom and a fair economy and they meant it.”

Walz spent another chunk of his stump speech arguing that his boss would bring a vastly different style of leadership to the White House than Americans have seen from Trump.

“Donald Trump says: ‘I don’t like people who don’t like me,’” Walz argued. Harris, he said, promises a leadership style that’s “not about who you can push down. It’s about who you can lift up.”

Supporters gave various reasons for turning out Wednesday.

As he awaited Walz’s arrival at Harrisburg International Airport Tim Potts, a retiree from Dickinson Township, Cumberland County, said that for him the Harris ticket has kindled an enthusiasm that he said he last may have felt in 2008 during the first Obama campaign.

“They’re full of energy, full of compassion, and full of experience; all of the things I think we need,” Potts said.

From the other end of the spectrum, Harrisburg resident Jack Garner said he’s sorry that Biden dropped out of the race. But, Garner said, he wanted to support the Harris / Walz ticket in the interest of keeping Trump out of the White House.

To be clear, Walz did cruise through most of the standard Democratic talking points from the York stage, like protecting women’s reproductive freedoms.

But he cautioned against what he called false choices that that position is a show-stopper for most Republican voters, arguing, as one example, that he believes that most Americans - even many of those who personally oppose abortion - don’t feel the government should regulate what they, or their neighbors, do in the privacy of their own bedroom.

“I might not make the same choices you make in your life. I may not see it the same way. That’s fine to have that difference. But the thing is we respect those personal differences. Those (choices) are yours to make. Those are not for me to make,” Walz said.

“And we certainly don’t want Donald Trump to make them.”

Minutes later, and after touting his chops as a hunter and sharpshooter, Walz said Harris’s would be an administration that doesn’t see protecting gun owners’ rights and pushing for new gun control measures as an either / or conversation.

“We can protect the Second Amendment,” said Walz, who as governor has signed legislation creating a so-called “red flag” policy in Minnesota. “But our first responsibility is to our kids.”

The governor wrapped his time in York with a quick stop at Flinchbaugh’s Orchard and Farm Market in Hellam Township, buying apples and cinnamon buns for the miles ahead, expressing surprise that the market still had fresh sweet corn in October, and getting a primer on how the business makes its dried apples.

Then it was on to Reading for the last event of the day.

“All gas. No brakes,” Walz said, as he wrapped his speech at the Fairgrounds. “I know I’m preaching to the choir. But the choir needs to sing, because we cannot afford another four years of Donald Trump.”

Wednesday’s was Walz’s second visit, so far, to the Harrisburg / Lancaster / York television market. Harris has yet to make an appearance in the region.