WILMINGTON — Gov. Tim Walz embarked on a tour of North Carolina Thursday, stopping in Wilmington to deliver remarks at a Greenfield Lake Amphitheater rally. Joining were Gov. Roy Cooper and North Carolina singer-songwriter James Taylor, who also performed.
READ MORE: VP presidential nominee JD Vance slams federal Helene response at Wilmington rally
“I’m honored to be on this ticket with Kamala Harris,” the Minnesotan governor said to a packed house. “Our ticket is running like everything’s on the line, mainly because everything’s on the line.”
With less than two weeks until Election Day, polling shows Vice President Harris in a dead heat with former President Donald Trump. The latest Times/Siena poll shows both candidates taking 48% of the vote; in the battleground state of North Carolina, data shows Trump leading by a less-than 1% margin.
“It is going to come down to the battleground state, probably none more important than North Carolina,” Walz said. “The one or two votes per precinct will be enough to win this thing.”
Currently, more than 45,000 people — out of roughly 189,000 registered voters — have cast ballots in New Hanover County during early voting, which closes Nov. 2. Of the makeup, 13,888 are Democrats, 15,928 are Republicans and 15,569 are unaffiliated voters.
Walz’s Wilmington visit made a show of including local voices. Before appearing on the GLA stage, Walz made a stop at a popular local burger joint, Winnie’s Tavern, to speak with members of the National Security Leaders of America. His rally speech was also preceded by Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo, Laney High School track and field coach Tamika Brown, and Cooper.
The North Carolina governor was among a shortlist of contenders considered as a potential vice presidential candidate when Harris took over as the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden removed himself from the ticket this summer. However, Cooper withdrew his name — in part, due to leaving state leadership in the hands of lieutenant governor and GOP governor candidate Mark Robinson.
“There’s still some folks out there trying to think about what they’re going to do,” Cooper said. “Even if you don’t agree with them on everything, you can always count on Kamala and Tim to fight for you to the very end.”
The tight race has prompted the two campaigns to ramp up their visits — and spending — across the country. The Harris and Trump campaigns, along with their allied super-PACS, spent an impressive half-billion dollars combined in just 16 days.
Harris has sent Doug Emhoff and former President Bill Clinton to campaign on her behalf in Wilmington in recent weeks, while both Trump and his VP pick, JD Vance, both have spoken at ILM’s Aero Center in Wilmington in the last two months.
Walz was in Wilmington Thursday, after campaigning at Duke University in Durham before also going to Greenville. In Wilmington, he had his own musical accompaniment — Chapel Hill singer-songwriter James Taylor. The six-time Grammy winner performed several songs, including “Carolina on My Mind” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” and led a sing along to “America the Beautiful.”
“[My dad], he had a sense of North Carolina as a place that embraces the future and that looks at reality and happily engages with the challenges that that we have,” Taylor said. “It’s that North Carolina, I think, that is so represented by everybody who’s here tonight.”
Taylor also gave praise to Cooper, who took the stage before Walz to resounding applause.
“Harris is showing us every day why we can’t let Donald Trump anywhere near the White House,” Cooper said. “Guys, it’s pretty clear he’s just too focused on himself to get anything done for the American people. He’s too focused on himself to worry about your life, your cost of living, your freedoms, your future. Harris, she does worry about you, and she has solutions.”
Cooper’s comments on Trump echoed a topic that took up a lot of air in Walz’s campaign message Thursday: that the former president poses a threat to the United States.
In the first few minutes of his speech, Walz addressed recent reporting on Trump’s military statements, including suggestions he could deploy troops on the American people.
The Washington Post reported people in Trump’s former cabinet, including his longest-serving chief of staff John Kelly, recalled the 45th president demanding to deploy 10,000 troops on Washington D.C. protests in 2020.
Walz has also drawn criticism for his response to the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020.
After major looting the day before, Walz approved a limited activation of the National Guard on May 28 to protect firefighters and the State Capitol complex and declared a peacetime emergency. Guard troops did not arrive until the next day, however — after the situation deteriorated into protestors taking over Third Precinct station, which caught fire and was destroyed. It took another night of violence for Walz to fully mobilize the National Guard; he turned down the Pentagon’s offer for military police assistance.
Walz’s initial restraint in leaving most of the response to local authorities led to critiques from the right, notably from the Republican-controlled Senate issuing a report blaming the destruction on a failure of leadership at the state and local levels.
In a Fox News interview earlier this month, Trump also considered deploying the military on his American political opponents whom he called “the enemy from within.”
“Now, look, I know I’m at the top of his list, but don’t kid yourself — you’re on the list too,” Walz told the Wilmington crowd Thursday. “Anybody who believes the Constitution is more important than Donald Trump is on that list now.”
John Kelly shared his opinion on Trump with the New York Times, which wrote Kelly thought Trump “met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.” Trump’s campaign denied the former president made such remarks.
These recent reports form the end of a long line of disparaging statements Trump has made on the military, active-duty members and veterans, including disputing former senator John McCain’s status as a war hero because he was captured. For five years of the Vietnam War, McCain was held as a prisoner of war and tortured.
Walz, a veteran himself, brought up Trump’s statements on “admiring Adolf Hitler” at Thursday’s campaign stop, with former service members in the National Security Leaders of America. The group also held a press conference Friday morning.
The Atlantic recently reported two White House sources claim Trump said: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” and “people who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” Trump’s campaign denies the allegations.
“Americans have a very different view of their politics, they can be very built-in on it, but we’ve never witnessed anything like this,” Walz said at GLA.
He emphasized his service in the Army National Guard Thursday, touting pride for “wearing the uniform” for more than two decades.
Walz has made several misleading statements insinuating he was active duty, including that he was a “veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom,” the name given to the war in Afghanistan and the broader war on terrorism. Though technically part of the operation, Walz was stationed in Italy to support Air Force personnel, not near the line of fire.
During his rally speech, Walz continued to press on Trump’s dangerous rhetoric and the “descent into madness” happening this election cycle. He did eventually move to the more “optimistic” subject of his and Harris’ vision for the American future, first touching on their economic plan.
Mirroring Harris’ recent talking points, Walz said 100 million middle-class Americans can expect a tax cut, along with a $6,000 child tax credit for families. According to the plan, small businesses will have access to a $1,000 capital tax credit. Though little additional details were offered on how the plan would come to fruition, several institutions have evaluated the plan, with varying results.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation’s analysis found that Harris’s economic plan would increase taxes — aimed at corporations and higher earners — by $1.7 trillion over 10 years, and after factoring in reduced revenue from projected slower economic growth, the net revenue increase comes to $642 billion. It concluded the tax plan would “fail to improve affordability challenges in housing and other sectors.”
However, a recent report from the Committee for a Responsible Budget, also non-partisan, found Trump’s spending plans would increase the nation’s debt by $7 trillion, while Harris’ plan would add $3.5 trillion. In the low-cost estimate, Harris’ plan would not increase the national debt and Trump would increase it $1.45 trillion.
The CRB concluded the debt would grow faster than the economy under both plans.
After broaching the economy, including the assurance he and Harris would make healthcare and housing costs more affordable, Walz turned back to contrasting his ticket with the GOP’s lineup. He specifically mentioned the Trump team’s threat to reproductive care and other areas of life.
“You remember a time when the Republican Party, when they talked about freedom, they actually meant it? Now when they talk about freedom, it’s the freedom to invade your exam room, freedom of government to be in your bedroom, freedom of government to tell you what books to read,” Walz said. “Look, I’ve been saying this, and I know you got it — families, neighborhoods, communities, states, countries work better if the government lets you just mind your own business.”
After Thursday night’s rally, Walz took off in his plane for a tour of Pennsylvania Friday. Trump will speak in Coplay, Pennsylvania on Oct. 28, while his running mate Vance will visit Atlanta, Georgia and Erie, Pennsylvania on Saturday. Harris is taking on Houston, Texas, on Friday with special guest Beyoncé at her side.
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