Who faces more pressure? Vance, Walz square off in unusually high-stakes VP debate

WASHINGTON ? JD Vance and Tim Walz square off Tuesday night in New York City with more on the line than the typical vice presidential debate as the two nominees from different Midwestern states look to seize on what could be the last marquee event before Election Day.

Vice presidential candidates and their debates don't usually move the political needle much. But Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's refusal to debate Democratic rival Kamala Harris again makes the Vance-Walz showdown likely the final time the two campaigns battle each other on the same stage before a nationally televised audience.

The faceoff hosted by CBS comes 35 days before the election with Harris and Trump locked in a razor-close race that appears likely to be decided by the outcomes of seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Debate live updates Latest news and info on the VP debate between Walz, Vance

"Traditionally, VP debates aren’t very important, but there’s more at stake in this one, I would argue," said Matthew Levendusky, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "Because Harris entered the race so late, and there was only one presidential debate, people will be more attuned to this one."

The debate features two men who have staked their political identities on their Midwest roots. Vance, a 40-year-old freshman U.S. senator from Ohio, has cultivated an image, through his book "Hillbilly Elegy," of a self-made man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to overcome poverty and family troubles.

Walz, 60, the governor of Minnesota, was tapped by Harris as her running mate in part because of his blue-collar appeal – a happy-go-lucky, flannel-wearing former high school teacher and football coach, who is cast as the everyday dad, fixing a car and repairing house gutters in campaign videos.

Those dynamics set up a competition during the debate for "who is the 'real' middle American," Levendusky said.

More: JD Vance has been a U.S. senator for 20 months. Is he ready to be vice president?

Walz heads into debate more popular than Vance

Raising the stakes further, Vance is vying to be the vice president of Trump, 78, a former one-term president who recently vowed he wouldn't run again in 2028 should he lose to Harris. If Trump wins in November, Vance immediately would become the most likely successor of the MAGA agenda and an instant front-runner to replace the term-limited Trump in the next presidential election campaign.

Walz faces pressure as Harris' top validator in aiming to persuade undecided voters who aren't fans of Trump but are still unsure about the sitting vice president. Harris secured the Democratic nomination in rapid fashion this summer after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid in late July after weeks of pressure from party members concerned about the 81-year-old incumbent's chances of defeating Trump.

Vance has had his own rocky rollout as Trump's running mate. A series of old interviews surfaced showing Vance disparaging women who choose not to have children, calling them "childless cat ladies" in one instance. Others exposed Vance's past criticism of Trump. Last week, The Washington Post reported Vance in a 2020 direct message on Twitter wrote that Trump "thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism."

More: The bro vote: Trump and Harris duel over what it means to be a man in America

Those controversies could help explain polling that shows Walz viewed more positively by Americans. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll in August found 37% of likely voters nationally have a favorable opinion of Vance, while 49% have an unfavorable opinion of him. Forty-eight percent of likely voters said they have a favorable opinion of Walz, and 36% had an unfavorable opinion.

"The most important thing for a running mate is, of course, to do no harm. And what we've seen from JD Vance is an awful lot of harm," said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron. "And so I think that the biggest pressure (in the debate) is on Vance, who is such a lightning rod."

How the two nominees will attack their opponents

In the usual pre-debate gamesmanship to set low expectations, both campaigns are downplaying the significance their prime-time meeting Tuesday night will have on the election's outcome.

Harris received only a modest polling bump after her Sept. 10 debate against Trump in which she was widely perceived – by pundits and voters alike – as the winner.

The Harris campaign wants the VP debate to turn into a continuation of last month's Harris-Trump debate that saw an aggressive Harris bait Trump into defending the sizes of his campaign rallies. Walz is expected to treat Vance as just a "proxy" for the Trump agenda. Still, the Harris campaign – and Walz himself – has gone out of their way to portray Vance as a "skilled debater," noting his numerous interviews over the years and Yale Law School pedigree.

"I'll work hard. That's what I do," Walz told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in an interview after the lone presidential debate. "I fully expect that Senator Vance, as a United States senator, a Yale Law guy, he'll come well prepared."

The Trump campaign has signaled that Vance intends to go after Walz's liberal record as governor, which has included strengthening gun control, expanding paid family and medical leave for Minnesota workers and providing universal free meals for public school students.

"Tim's been a complete disaster in Minnesota. What's happened is, he's so good at being this folksy, nice, kind of down-to-earth guy until people get to know him and his policies," House Republican Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., a Trump surrogate, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

Referring to California's Democratic governor, Emmer added: "Once you get to know the real Tim Walz, he's like Gavin Newsom in a plaid shirt."

Vance played by Buttigieg, Walz by Emmer in debate preps

Emmer has played the role of Walz, a fellow Minnesotan, during Vance's debate preparation, which has taken place in Cincinnati and in virtual Zoom sessions. Monica Crowley, a Trump-era assistant treasury secretary and Fox News host, has acted as CBS's co-moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan for the mock sessions.

Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller has been at the center of Vance's debate practices, along with Usha Vance, Vance's wife, who has largely taken a back seat publicly on the campaign trail.

For Walz's debate preparation, former presidential candidate and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has played the part of Vance – someone Buttigieg has mocked regularly since he was tapped by Trump.

"Where do you start?" Buttigieg said in July in an interview on MSNBC when asked how he would approach debating Vance. "They've selected somebody who has really reminded so many Americans of why they are off put by the turn that the Republican Party has taken in the last few years."

Two Harris-Walz campaign aides, Rob Friedlander and Zayn Siddique, have managed the debate preparation sessions, held in Minneapolis, Harbor Springs, Michigan, and on the campaign trail. Liz Allen, a former State Department official who is Walz's campaign chief of staff, and Chris Schmitter, a longtime senior adviser to Walz, also have helped with Walz's debate practice sessions.

"At some level, both have to do the basic goal of just demonstrating through demeanor, visuals and words that they would be people you could imagine as president of the United States," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

Zelizer said both Walz and Vance will look to carry out their roles of attack dogs for their respective campaigns. That means Walz leaning into a message of economic populism and his tagline of "weird" to describe Trump and his MAGA supporters, and Vance attacking the Biden-Harris administration's record on the economy and immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Yet it's perhaps just as important for both to avoid a glaring unforced error.

"They don't want to make any mistake that becomes the story," Zelizer said. "They don't want to do anything that becomes more important than the people they're running with."

Military service, pet-eating controversies to take center stage

Some issues are almost certain to come up in what will be a 90-minute debate – which, unlike the presidential debate, will have live microphones throughout, even when it is the opponent's turn to answer a question. In a break from recent vice presidential debates, both candidates will be standing behind lecterns, not seated.

Shortly after Harris chose Walz as her running mate, Vance went on the attack against Walz over the governor's 24-year record in the Minnesota National Guard. Vance, a military veteran who worked in public affairs, accused Walz of "stolen valor" for retiring from the National Guard before his battalion was deployed to Iraq. Walz has said he stepped down to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress in 2006.

"When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him," Vance said in August.

More: Hot mics and no seats: Here are the rules for the VP debate

Vance also slammed Walz for once describing "weapons of war that I carried in war" despite Walz never being deployed overseas for combat. Walz, who used the phrase when describing his support for gun control, later acknowledged that he misspoke.

Walz has ridiculed the Trump campaign for elevating a conspiracy theory that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio – a city of 50,000 people in Vance's home state – have eaten residents' pet cats and dogs. Vance has been a chief promoter of the unsubstantiated rumors, which Trump brought up in his debate against Harris to bolster his argument that undocumented migrants are threats to Americans.

More: Haitian nonprofit files longshot charges against Trump, Vance over Springfield claims

“You tell me that you had this on your bingo card: ‘And they’re eating cats,'" Vance said at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after the Trump-Harris debate, prompting chants of "We're not eating cats!" from supporters.

Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at the Texas A&M University and a former debate coach, said Walz and Vance will both try to "embarrass and humiliate" their opponent. She said Vance tends to be more combative in debates than Walz. But she believes the Democratic governor heads into the debate with more momentum because of his stronger popularity among the majority of voters.

Trump's age makes it even more important that Vance prove he can serve as president if needed, she said, while Walz must maintain a "tough balance" to display his folksy Midwest demeanor while still aggressively lobbing attacks at Vance.

"They both," Mercieca said, "have a lot of pressure on them."

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Vance and Walz to square off in unusually high-stakes VP debate