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Tim Walz will deliver the biggest speech of his life on Wednesday, marking his rise from relative political obscurity a month ago to Kamala Harris’s running mate in the most watched US presidential election in decades.
Walz’s primetime speech on the third night of the Democratic National Convention will be his chance to introduce himself to US voters — and deepen the attacks on Donald Trump.
Walz, the Minnesota governor, popularised descriptions of Trump and his running mate JD Vance as “weird”, an attack-line deployed repeatedly on Wednesday from other speakers, alongside efforts to depict the Republican candidate as a right-wing extremist.
Harris picked Walz, 60, a former soldier and teacher, earlier this month, after she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate in November’s election and launched an accelerated vetting process to find a running mate. She also considered Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Arizona senator Mark Kelly for the role.
Walz, who served six terms in the US House of Representatives, is seen as an asset for Harris as she seeks to win over working-class voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump’s campaign has sought to paint Walz as a dangerous liberal who misrepresented his more than two decades of service in the Army National Guard. Republican hardliners have also raised questions about Walz’s ties to China.
Polls suggest that Walz remains popular — if still largely unknown to many voters.
A new poll out on Wednesday from Democratic pollsters Blueprint found 44 per cent of voters had a favourable opinion of Walz, but 22 per cent said they had not heard of him, or had no opinion of him.
Walz’s speech will come a day before Harris formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination and makes her own address to the party and US voters.
The speeches will be a chance for the two Democrats at the top of the ticket to press for unity despite a period of bitter internal debate about Biden, who dropped his own bid for the presidency after coming under pressure from party grandees who doubted his fitness for the race.
Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, was one of the party leaders that put pressure on Biden to withdraw. She will be among a list of speakers on Wednesday that also includes former president Bill Clinton.
Relations between Biden and Pelosi have remained frosty since the president ended his run. Biden told reporters after his conference speech on Monday that he had not talked to Pelosi since stepping down.
Pelosi has done little to downplay her role in Biden’s exit, telling The Washington Post in Chicago on Wednesday: “I have my relationship with the president, and I just wanted to win this election. So if they’re upset, I’m sorry for them, but the country is very happy.”
Democrats are also riven over the conflict in Gaza and the DNC has taken place amid street protests in Chicago against the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas.
In one of the most powerful moments on Wednesday night, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli hostage held by Hamas, appealed for a ceasefire deal that would lead to the release of the hostages. The crowd chanted: “Bring them home!”
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