Walz On The Front Lines In An Effort To Win Over ‘Persuadable Men’
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in part because he was thought to be able to win over a key demographic, white working-class male voters. But gender gap continues to plague the Harris-Walz campaign.
White working-class white males — and, more recently, increasing numbers of Black and Latino males — have abandoned the Democratic Party for Donald Trump in numbers that are sounding alarms in the Democratic Party.
A MinnPost-Embold Research poll that surveyed likely voters in Minnesota in September showed that 40% of males surveyed said they supported Harris and 54% supported Trump. That gender gap has shown up in national polls and polls in swing states that are likely to decide this coin-toss election.
For instance, a poll taken by ABC New/Ipsos last week showed Harris had the support of 44% of male voters while Trump had the backing of 52%. Trump"s numbers are highest with working-class men.
So the Harris-Walz campaign is ramping up its outreach to male voters and Walz has been deployed to the frontlines of that campaign.
Last Friday, Walz had an interview on ABC"s "Good Morning America" with host and Super Bowl champion Michael Strahan in which the two discussed Walz"s time as a high school football coach. Then it was off to Mankato West High School, where Walz taught and coached football, to deliver a pep talk before the team"s game against Mankato East.
Then it was off to Sleepy Eye, where Walz trekked through tall grass with his Beretta shotgun in Minnesota"s pheasant hunting season. The Harris-Walz campaign also recently livestreamed Walz"s rally in Arizona via Twitch, a platform known for its video game streams, while a Twitch streamer provided commentary about the rally.
On Monday, Walz was in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he toured the Green Bay Packers" Lambeau Field and visited the locker room. "Wow, this is beautiful," he remarked. He also said the historic stadium is "ground zero for football."
The Harris-Walz campaign said efforts to reach out to male voters is a priority.
“This latest campaign push to reach male voters in swing states comes on the heels of the governor"s recent media blitz, and builds on ongoing efforts to engage and reach out to persuadable men," the campaign said in an emailed statement.
To reach these "persuadable men," the Harris-Walz campaign has recently targeted Latino men — some of whom have been receptive to Trump"s pitches — with events across the battleground states. It has also placed ads in those states during sporting events, sports talk radio and video game websites that skew heavily toward male voters.
The campaign also said it has placed an emphasis on mobilizing surrogates who they hope appeal to male voters, including an "Athletes for Harris" program, co-chaired by basketball stars Stephen Curry, Magic Johnson and Chris Paul. The campaign has also sought the endorsements of 15 NFL Hall of Famers.
Former President Barack Obama — as a campaign surrogate for Harris — has also been asked to help. He criticized Black men last week over "excuses" to not vote for Harris during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, saying that sitting out the election or voting for Trump is "not acceptable."
Still, Walz has a difficult task with less than three weeks until Election Day.
Rutgers University political science professor Ross Baker said the gender gap between Democrats and Republicans isn"t new and the result of "three decades feminism-forward push by Democrats that caused some men to say, “What about us?’”
“Boys especially have not been a policy priority for Democrats,” Baker said.
He said he"s personally witnessed a preference given to female students by faculty Democrats.
“I can"t find enough male students to achieve numerical gender parity in my honors seminars,” Baker said. “Nobody"s championing these lads and that breeds resentment and a feeling of abandonment.”
While Democrats — who have made access to legal abortions a main issue in their campaigns this year — may have slighted males, Trump"s success among male voters has not been by default.
The Trump-Vance campaign has made the election all about gender, widening the pre-existing gap, with a testosterone-fueled campaign that has featured retired wrestler Hulk Hogan tearing off his shirt at the Republican National Convention, the airing of James Brown"s "It"s a Man"s World" at his rallies and Trump"s praise for "strongmen" and what he has determined are masculine values.
Trump has insisted many times that Harris, as a woman, is unfit to lead, calling her “dumb as a rock” and "crazy." Meanwhile Vance has taken an anti-feminist tack with his remarks about childless "cat ladies" and other insults to non-traditional mothers like Harris who he said are miserable "at their own lives and the choices that they"ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Walz, a white male from small-town America, was chosen to complement San Franciscan, multi-racial Harris and "solidified the support of people who wanted to support the Democratic ticket" after President Joe Biden decided against running for reelection, said Todd Rapp, a public affairs consultant in Minneapolis.
But Rapp said that as a vice presidential candidate, Walz has limited ability to move the needle among male voters or the electorate at large. "In the end, particularly in this cycle, the vice presidential candidate doesn"t have that much of an impact,” he said.
Nevertheless, Rapp, who has worked as a Democratic consultant, said he’s seen a "small amount of progress" for the Harris-Walz campaign among likely male voters in swing states.
Other analysts, including Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, said if Trump is running up his numbers with male voters, Harris must do the same with women — who already are more likely to identify as Democrats than men — to win the election.
And, yes, Harris"s gender may matter to some male voters.The Pew Research Center said that in 2016, Hillary Clinton lost male voters to Trump by 11 percentage points while Biden and Trump were roughly even among male voters in 2020.
This story was originally published by MinnPost. This story was made available by On the Ground, a service of the Institute for Nonprofit News. Learn more here https://inn.org/resources/on-the-ground.
Ana Radelat is MinnPost's Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on X at @radelat.