WASHINGTON — Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will go at it tonight in the only scheduled vice presidential debate of the campaign.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, said Vance’s background growing up in rural poverty in a broken home, joining the armed services, and serving in elective office mirrors the lives of many Wisconsin voters, including Van Orden’s.
“We get up in the morning, we go to work, and we understand that when you work hard, you apply yourself, that you can make something of yourself in America,” Van Orden said. “That's why he appeals directly to us, because he is us.”
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, has a similar sentiment about Walz, arguing he relates to people in the midwest because of his roots there.
“And certainly being from just across the border in Wisconsin, representing a district for years before he was governor, a lot of people know him in the western part of the state, and I think that will help additional people vote for the Harris-Walz ticket,” Pocan said.
Pocan said Walz can shine on the issue of abortion and IVF. Former President Donald Trump appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who ended the constitutional right to an abortion, and Democrats want to restore that right. And although Trump says he supports IVF, Republicans in Congress have blocked a bill that would establish protections and rights for people to access IVF. Senator Ron Johnson told Spectrum News that’s because the bill is “overreach” and Democrats are politicizing the issue.
“[Walz] and his wife Gwen used alternative ways to have fertilization,” Pocan said. “And I think having that personal experience, from someone who has a lot of common sense and can express it in a way that everyone can really understand, I think will drive home the point why the extremeness of project 2025 and Donald Trump and JD Vance is just not in step with this country.”
Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, said Vance can separate himself from Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris by declaring that life was better under Trump.
“To me, the key question is, ‘Should vice president Harris get a promotion?’ And clearly, it has been a failure of America here the last three, four years,” Tiffany said. “But the American people know that. And JD Vance needs to lay out what's the vision for the future: We're going to secure the border, we're going to have a strong American foreign policy so we don't have this weakness that leads to instability around the world.”
The debate hosted by CBS News and simulcast by Spectrum News and other networks will last 90 minutes and there will be no live audience.