This week’s vice presidential debate puts Vance and Walz in the spotlight

WASHINGTON — Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz will face off in a vice presidential debate on Tuesday, in what may be the last time voters will hear both campaigns argue their causes side by side.

Vance, a senator from Ohio who is running alongside former President Donald Trump, and Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Vice President Kamala Harris, will face off for 90 minutes on a debate stage in Manhattan without an audience.

The 9 p.m. debate, hosted by CBS News, comes as candidates look to shore up support for their campaigns in the final five weeks of the race and as polls show Harris gaining ground on Trump, but is still largely within the fault tolerance.

While vice-presidential debates have historically drawn less attention than presidential duels, political analysts expect more voters to tune in this year as Harris and Trump do not currently plan any further debates beyond their first on September 10.

“Typically in October there are either one or two additional presidential debates that are much closer to the election. So, in a way, that’s it. These will be sort of the closing statements for the two campaigns,” said Aaron Kall , director of the University of Michigan debate program and editor of the book “Debating the Donald,” about Trump’s performance in the 2016 debates.

Possible effects

In the past, vice presidential debates haven’t moved much, but Tuesday’s debate could still help both campaigns generate short-term buzz that energizes their respective campaigns, said Christopher J. Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton and co-author from the book “Do Running Mates Matter?: The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections.”

“The [vice presidential] “Debates get a lot of attention, they get a lot of headlines and there can be some viral moments,” Devine told Newsday, recalling the online memes that emerged when a fly flew on the then-vice president’s face during his debate with Harris Mike Pence landed in 2020.

Dan Schnur, who served as communications director for Republican John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, said, “Vice-presidential debates aren’t usually that important because candidates aren’t usually that important to the candidacy.”

But he acknowledged Tuesday’s debate could make a difference. “There are several reasons why this case could be more impactful than most,” Schnur said. “If most Trump supporters don’t say it out loud, they may know that the last presidential debate didn’t go well for him.”

“Just as Joe Biden had to rally his troops after Barack Obama’s first debate in 2012, a strong showing from Vance could be much more helpful to the Trump campaign than is typically the case,” he said.

Schnur said Walz will play an important role in “reaching rural and small-town voters in swing states, those voters who may not yet know much about Harris or may not be particularly motivated by her.”

“Walz can fill some of those gaps and potentially bring back some of those working-class Biden voters,” he said.

With debates looming as early voting increases in some states, the vice presidential debate could help persuade undecided voters who typically don’t follow the campaign until closer to the election, said Kall of the University of Michigan.

“With only about 40 days left until the election, there are so few events that can cause so many people to drop their work and tune in, especially if they are undecided,” Kall said. “We know that undecided voters are getting into these things now that we’re past Labor Day, and they’re starting to pay more attention as we get closer to Election Day.”

Former Long Island congressman Steve Israel, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015 and now serves as director of the nonpartisan Cornell University Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, said: “The debate may not change many minds because Most viewers already have partisan leanings.”

But Israel pointed out that “for the remaining undecided voters in battleground states who tune in, the debate must show which candidate is more authentic, relatable and, most importantly, capable of assuming the role of president in a national emergency.” “

What to expect

Both Harris and Trump are relying on their candidates to “challenge each other’s credentials” in front of a national audience, said Robert Rowland, a communications studies professor at the University of Kansas who focuses on the president’s rhetoric.

“Vance fulfills a role often played by vice presidential candidates – the attack dog who carries Donald Trump’s nationalist-populist message,” Rowland told Newsday. “Walz was perhaps the most effective spokesman for the Kamala Harris campaign’s message,” calling Trump, Vance and their allies “weird.”

Vance and Walz each enter the debate with vulnerabilities that will likely be the source of questions and lines of attack.

Vance has promoted baseless claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have doubled up on their pets, even though officials there have repeatedly said the claims are unfounded. He also came under scrutiny for his comments about women without children, in which he referred to them as “childless cat ladies.”

Walz faced questions about the circumstances of his 1995 arrest on drunken and reckless driving charges and questioned whether his 2006 congressional campaign accurately described the arrest. He also faced scrutiny from Vance over the timing of his retirement from the U.S. National Guard in 2005 after 24 years of service. Walz said he withdrew to run for Congress, but Vance claimed Walz left shortly before his Minnesota unit deployed to Iraq.

Both men are “effective communicators and persuasive and above-average debaters,” Kall said, noting that Vance is a frequent guest on political talk shows and Sunday morning political shows and responds to “controversial interviewers.” Kall said Walz has a “really relatable, folksy language that people seem to identify with.”

To have a strong night, Vance will need to “both talk about himself and his accomplishments during his short time in the Senate, as well as present a future vision for the country,” Kall said.

Walz, he said, needs to make sure there are no “big gaffes or anything that could kind of put him in the spotlight and undo some of the gains that the Harris-Walz campaign has had in the last few weeks.”

Tuesday’s mission, Kall said, was to “do no harm.”