Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice president, speaks to a crowd of union members at Milwaukee’s Labor Fest on Sept. 2. 2024. (Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
MILWAUKEE — In a high-energy campaign speech at this city’s annual Labor Fest, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota vowed Monday that he and Vice President Kamala Harris would lead an administration that puts workers first, contrasting their policies with those of the Republican ticket led by former President Donald Trump.
“You know that unions and organized labor are more popular today than at any time in our lifetimes. Any time,” Walz said. “And you know why? Because it’s union halls where the purest form of democracy is practiced.”
Wisconsin Democrats and union members gave Walz a noisily enthusiastic greeting as he all but bounded on to the stage, and he responded with an equally exuberant address that ended with an admonition for union members and their allies to get out and work for the Democratic Harris-Walz ticket between now and Election Day Nov. 5.
Enroute from the Milwaukee airport to the event, vans at the back of the Walz motorcade were involved in a crash, the Associated Press reported. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but the Harris campaign said there were minor injuries to some of the passengers in those vehicles, according to the AP.
Walz, whose vehicle was not involved and who was unharmed, mentioned the crash at the start of his speech. “We’ve spoken with the staff. I’m relieved to say that with a few minor injuries, everybody’s going to be okay,” he said, and thanked the U.S. Secret Service personnel and first responders at the scene.
Labor Fest is an annual Labor Day event on Milwaukee’s lakefront summer festival grounds sponsored by the Milwaukee County Labor Council. The event is a traditional Wisconsin venue for politicking in election years. President Joe Biden was the keynote speaker in 2022.
More than 4,000 people were in the audience Monday, the Harris campaign said.
Warm-up speakers including Gov. Tony Evers, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is running for reelection, worked to build enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket — a task that loud cheers from the crowd suggested didn’t require much effort.
Walz was introduced by Rich Kangas, vice president of Iron Workers Local 8, who was quick to not only champion Harris’ record as part of the administration of President Joe Biden but to attack Trump.
Trump “long promised an infrastructure week that never came,” Kangas said. “We didn’t get that infrastructure week until Joe Biden and Kamala Harris delivered on infrastructure for a decade. The Biden-Harris administration has helped create good, paying union jobs here in Wisconsin and across the country and anytime my brothers and sisters are working, it warms my heart.”
Kangas called Walz “someone who will continue the historic effort to support unions and workers, because he knows when unions are strong, we are strong.”
Walz’s speech carried all the hallmarks that have marked his candidacy since Harris named him as her running mate: highlighting his years as a public school teacher and teachers’ union member, and his enactment of laws as governor that included creating paid family leave benefit and banning employers from holding mandatory anti-union meetings for workers during union drives.
He praised Harris for casting a tie-breaking vote as vice president that passed the American Rescue Plan Act in the evenly-divided Senate within three months after Biden took office.
“And it’s not bragging if it’s true — she was part of the most pro-union administration in American history,” Walz said. “From sticking up for workers to voting for fair legislation to walking picket lines, she was there with workers every step of the way.”
Walz lit into the idea that Trump had some distinctive appeal to working people.
“He does know something about working people, Donald Trump does,” Walz said. “He knows how to take advantage of them. That’s what he knows. Every single chance these guys have gotten, they’ve waged wars on workers and the middle class.”
He said the Harris-Walz campaign isn’t just about issuing warnings about the Trump campaign’s agenda, however.
“We have a responsibility to tell people not just what we’re against, but what we’re for,” Walz said, and proceeded to check off a series of campaign promises: lowering taxes “on working families” and making “corporations pay their fair share”; ensuring that Social Security and Medicare benefits aren’t cut; fighting for a national paid family and medical leave program along the lines of the one he signed in Minnesota. (The current federal Family and Medical Leave Act or FMLA is unpaid.)
“Vice President Harris, myself and everyone here believes that you should be free to make your own health care decisions, not politicians,” Walz said.
He nodded at addressing soaring college loan debt. And while pointing out that he was a veteran, a hunter and a skilled trap shooter and supported the Second Amendment, Walz said that “we believe our kids should be free to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the halls.”
Walz attacked Project 2025, the nearly-1,000 page document put together by the Heritage Foundation as a road map for a Republican administration.
“The goals in Project 2025 are clear. It should be subtitled, how to screw the working people,” Walz said, citing provisions that would weaken overtime pay, remove protections against child labor and ban public sector unions nationwide.
And he dismissed the Trump campaign’s attempts to distance itself from the plan, calling on another line that he’s practiced. “I coached football long enough,” Walz said. “No, you take time to draw up a playbook, you’re damn sure going to use it. You are damn sure going to run those plays.”
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