Gov. Tim Walz speaks in Wilmington on Thursday October 24. (Screengrab from CSPAN video feed)
Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, in the final stretch before Election Day, encouraged North Carolinians to go vote during a rally in Wilmington on Thursday.
It’s the latest visit to the Tar Heel State in an increasingly frequent series of trips by presidential candidates and their surrogates. The Minnesota governor was in North Carolina last Thursday as well for political stops in Durham and Winston-Salem.
Walz told the Wilmington audience about how he and his family had gone out to vote the day before in Minnesota. It was his 18-year-old son Gus’ first time voting.
“It is going to come down to the battleground states, probably none more important than North Carolina,” Walz said. “One or two votes per precinct will be enough to win this thing.”
More than 1 million votes have been cast so far in North Carolina, where early voting opened last week and runs until Nov. 2.
Walz, known for his lighthearted humor and sharp digs — he’s credited for framing the GOP as “weird” — used his time on the stage to poke fun at former President Donald Trump.
“We were talking about Georgia, and I said, ‘how many votes did we win Georgia by last time?’ and somebody said, ‘I don’t know. Ask Trump,’” Walz quipped, referring to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
“Tell me this,” Walz continued, “how aligned would the universe be, bending towards justice, if we win Georgia by one vote, and it’s Jimmy Carter’s vote?”
At the age of 100, the former president recently voted early in Georgia for Kamala Harris.
Walz’s attacks on Trump didn’t end there. He came at the former president for the lack of a second debate, after the Republican declined to participate.
“Last night where [Harris] showed up, which was supposed to be a debate, then she showed up when it was a town hall, Donald Trump’s nowhere around,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Walz visited Duke University, where he spoke to students on campus and men’s basketball coach Jon Scheyer, and met with voters in Greenville.
The governor defended the Second Amendment in Wilmington, pointing out how he and Vice President Kamala Harrs both own guns — Walz is a veteran and a hunter.
He stressed the importance of safety and background checks.
“Owning guns doesn’t mean you can’t be for common sense solutions to keep our kids from being shot,” Walz said. “Kamala and I pledge we will uphold the Second Amendment, while also upholding our first responsibility, protection of our children in our communities from gun violence.”
Walz also promised that Harris would restore Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion. Previously, his wife Gwen has shared stories of how she used fertility treatments to conceive.
The Democratic party, often stereotyped as coastal, urban elites with Ivy League degrees, has attempted to appeal to another demographic of voters via Walz, a midwestern dad with humble backgrounds as a high school social studies teacher and football coach. A regular guy.
Walz leaned into the persona while speaking on stage. He defended his choice to criticize billionaire Elon Musk during a rally in Madison, Wisconsin on Tuesday.
“I did a very midwestern euphemism the other day when I was talking about Elon being Donald Trump’s running mate and jumping around like a dipshit on stage,” he said. “Some people in parts of the country don’t know what that is. Trust me, it’s what he is.”
It’s been a busy week for political campaigns in North Carolina.
Trump opened the week with a blitz in Swannanoa, Concord, Greenville, and Greensboro. Running mate JD Vance is set to hold events in Raeford and Monroe on Friday.
On the Democratic side, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff made stops in Cary and Carrboro on Tuesday. First Lady Jill Biden and former President Barack Obama are closing out the week, with Biden visiting Asheville, Fayetteville, and Cary, and Obama speaking in Charlotte.
The Harris-Walz campaign has a friend in James Taylor. The American singer-songwriter performed Thursday in Wilmington, NC. (Screengrab C-SPAN)
