To beat Trump, Harris and Walz need to win over moderates; Idaho Democrats have some ideas

CHICAGO — Delegates at the Democratic National Convention were fired up on Wednesday as Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s vice presidential nominee, took the stage to rally the party faithful and make a pitch to the voters who will decide the election.

After telling the audience on television and in the United Center to save what he was about to say and send it to their undecided relatives, Walz summed up the campaign’s message.

“If you’re middle class family or a family trying to get into the middle class, Kamala Harris is going to cut your taxes,” Walz said. “If you’re getting squeezed by prescription drug prices, Kamala Harris is going to take on big pharma. If you’re hoping to buy a home, Kamala Harris is going to help make it more affordable. And no matter who you are, Kamala Harris is going to stand up and fight for your freedom to live the life that you want to lead, because that’s what we want for ourselves and it’s what we want for our neighbors.”

Enthusiasm among Democrats has surged in the month since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, but the party’s chances of holding the White House depend largely on winning over independents and even some Republicans in a handful of key states.

“I think if we stress our values, above the retribution and the hatred and the bigotry that the other side uses on a daily basis, that will resonate with voters,” Evan Koch, chair of the Kootenai County Democrats, said in an interview Wednesday.

Pete Gertonson, chair of the Nez Perce County Democrats, chimed in to say, “If you strip away the party emblems, and we’re just people talking, everybody has those same values: taking care of your neighbors, taking care of your children, having families.”

“As soon as you put a party label to something, all of a sudden we’re divided,” Gertonson said. “But not having a party label, that’s sort of where I try to begin the conversation. Let’s just forget we’re Republicans and Democrats and let’s talk about what matters.”

Idaho is hardly a swing state, but DNC delegates from the Gem State said they’ve learned lessons from reaching out to their more conservative neighbors that could help their party build a broad coalition that could keep GOP nominee President Donald Trump from returning to the White House.

“I think that for decades we have not focused enough on actual working-class people,” said Kaylee Peterson, the Democratic candidate for Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, which spans the western half of the state from Canada to Nevada.

The influence of money in politics and the perception that politicians in D.C. are out of touch has given rural and working-class voters “a righteous anger,” Peterson said, at “a system that doesn’t work for them.”

“And what the right has done very successfully in places like Idaho is weaponize this,” she said. “Even though they’re equally guilty, they’ve pointed the finger saying, ‘This is the Democrats.’ Right now, all we should be doing is focusing on working-class economic solutions.”

Peterson, who lost to incumbent GOP Rep. Russ Fulcher in 2022 by a wide margin, said she has no illusions about flipping the deep-red district this year. Instead, she has committed to run for several more years so that voters in the vast district can actually get to know a Democrat, instead of letting Republicans caricature her party.

In a whirlwind vetting process after she became the Democratic nominee, Harris reportedly narrowed her options for a running mate down to Walz — a retired Army Reserve sergeant, avid hunter and former high school football coach with a progressive record as governor — and Josh Shapiro, the more politically moderate governor of Pennsylvania, who addressed the Washington delegation Wednesday morning.

By choosing Walz, Harris seemingly embraced the theory that undecided voters will be persuaded by his plainspoken style despite his more left-wing policy positions, rather than the centrism of Shapiro, a Georgetown Law School graduate and former attorney general whose sweeping oratory has drawn comparisons to former President Barack Obama.

Obama, whose tenure saw rural and working-class voters drift away from Democrats and eventually help Trump replace him in the White House, dedicated much of his speech at the DNC on Tuesday to encouraging his party to reach out to the neighbors and relatives who share basic values of decency and respect, even if they differ on policy.

“That even when we don’t agree with each other, we can find a way to live with each other,” Obama said. “That’s Kamala’s vision. That’s Tim’s vision. That’s the Democratic Party’s vision. And our job over the next 11 weeks is to convince as many people as possible to vote for that vision.”

In a speech Wednesday night, Shapiro cast the Democrats as the party of “real freedom,” drawing a contrast with GOP efforts to ban books and restrict reproductive health care.

In the speech that concluded the convention’s third day, Walz delivered his own version of that message.

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make, even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves,” he said. “We’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

Jan Studer, vice chair of the Kootenai County Democrats, said Walz’s version of that message resonates with many of her neighbors in North Idaho.

“I’m hoping that the message from this convention also is motivating to independents and more moderate Republicans in Kootenai County, who might want to support getting away from the Trump era,” said Studer, who lives in Coeur d’Alene but grew up in the southern Minnesota district Walz represented in Congress and, like the vice presidential nominee, earned a degree from Minnesota State University in Mankato.

Several Republicans have spoken at the DNC to endorse that vision, including Trump’s former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham. In a speech on Tuesday, John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, invoked the memory of the late GOP Sen. John McCain, a fellow Arizonan who famously broke with Trump and his party to preserve the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature health care law, shortly before his death in 2018.

“I have an urgent message for the majority of Americans who, like me, are in the political middle,” Giles said. “John McCain’s Republican Party is gone and we don’t owe a damned thing to what’s been left behind. So let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first. And let’s put the adults in the room our country deserves.”

Terri Pickens, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of Idaho as a Democrat in 2022 and is weighing a gubernatorial bid in 2026, is a former Republican who said she left the party when Trump became its nominee. After voting as a Republican in Idaho’s 2016 primary, she registered as a Democrat in 2020 when she was drawn to Biden’s campaign pledge to “restore the soul of America.”

“That party, to me, is unrecognizable,” Pickens said of the GOP. “I’m the mother of a gay daughter who now doesn’t have reproductive freedom in my state, and she’s very concerned that if Trump’s Project 2025 gets through, she’s not going to be able to marry the woman she wants to marry if she lives in Idaho.”

Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page blueprint for a new GOP president written by alumni of his administration. The document doesn’t propose outlawing same-sex marriage, but it would favor opposite-sex marriage for federal support and roll back other protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Improving Democrats’ performance in rural areas by a few percentage points wouldn’t mean winning a statewide race in Idaho, but it could be enough for Harris and Walz to win crucial states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania where the party has fallen out of favor with rural and working-class voters in recent years.

When she formally announced the Idaho delegates’ support for Harris during the roll call vote on Tuesday, Lauren Necochea, chair of the Idaho Democratic Party, celebrated the fact that Democrats have fielded a candidate in each of the state’s 35 legislative district races for the first time in at least three decades.

“To me, that is success — Democrats showing up and participating and having candidates to run all across Idaho,” Gertonson said. “Whether they win or not. I’m hoping they will, but at least we’re giving everybody a choice.”

As he closed his speech, Walz delivered a similar message for a national audience, acknowledging how close the election is likely to be.

“I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks,” he said as delegates waved “Coach Walz” signs. “So let me finish with this, team: It’s the fourth quarter, we’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And boy, do we have the right team.”

After praising Harris as tough, experienced and a great candidate, Walz brought his football metaphor home.

“Our job, for everyone watching, is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling.”