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NEW YORK — Republican Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, and Minnesota's Democratic Gov. Tim Walz met in person for the first time Tuesday night on the vice presidential debate stage in New York with just over a month to go before the Nov. 5 election.
The undercard matchup is the last scheduled event of this magnitude ahead of Election Day, after both major party campaigns broke with the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has typically hosted three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate in the final month of the campaign. Republican nominee former President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris squared off last month in Philadelphia, but Trump has not agreed to a follow-up contest.
Although the impact of past vice presidential debates on the final outcome has been difficult to determine, both Vance and Walz were expected to seek to avoid any significant missteps and hope to win over the handful of voters in several swing states who will determine what could be a historically close presidential election.
What to watch for
By its nature, Tuesday's debate — featuring a pair of No. 2 candidates — will lack the star power of a debate between presidential front-runners. The 2020 vice presidential debate between Harris and then-Vice President Mike Pence — which was hosted at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City — is arguably most memorable for the fly that infamously alighted on Pence's head.
Given that most voters will make their decision based on who is at the top of the ticket, many pundits have speculated that Vance and Walz will each try to land attacks that speak to their opponents broadly rather than focusing on personal attacks against each other. But aides to both men told reporters they expect some fireworks during the 90-minute debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York.
Walz rose to prominence over the summer by casting the Trump-Vance ticket as "weird," a line of attack that was quickly adopted by many Democrats. He is likely to attack Vance for spreading a false story that Haitian immigrants are eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio — which has remained a dominant campaign story in the weeks since — while trying to focus on Harris' agenda for the next four years.
The governor has tried to temper expectations ahead of the debate by comparing his record as a public school teacher to Vance's Yale Law School degree.
"Look, he's (a) Yale Law guy," Walz told MSNBC last month. "I'm a public school teacher. So we know where he's at on that."
Trump's team has similarly tried to raise expectations for Walz on Tuesday night.
"Walz is very good in debates," said Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, according to NBC News. "I want to repeat that. Tim Walz is very good in debates. Really good. He's been a politician for nearly 20 years. He'll be very well-prepared for tomorrow night."
Vance has called the Democratic ticket "dangerously liberal" and will likely try to blame Harris for inflation and surges in immigration under the Biden administration. He is also expected to bring up questions about Walz's military service, according to Tom Behrends, a retired command sergeant major who joined a Trump campaign call about the debate.
The Ohio senator has accused Walz of "stolen valor" relating to comments Walz made about gun control. Walz said in a video, "We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war."
Although Walz served for 24 years in the Army National Guard, he was never deployed to a war zone. A Harris campaign spokeswoman told the Associated Press that Walz "misspoke" in the 2018 video.
Walz also faces accusations from Vance and other Republicans of exaggerating his rank within the Army National Guard. Walz reached the rank of a command sergeant major but retired at the lower rank of master sergeant because he retired before he met the academic requirements to keep the higher rank.
Vance also has a background of military service. He was deployed to Iraq as a military journalist but never saw combat.
Will the debate matter?
Harris was widely seen as the winner of her September debate against Trump, but little has changed in public polling since then, and the race remains extremely close. Political analysts say vice presidential debates — and vice presidential candidates themselves — are often not decisive in an election.
Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, reviewed the impact of vice presidential debates over the past several decades and concluded, "It's hard to judge the impact of vice presidential debates," saying they "tend to blend into the overall narrative of the race."
"But the debate between Vance and Walz is occurring in a race that is razor thin," she wrote. "With very few votes deciding the outcome, anything — including the vice presidential debate — could matter, which is why we will be watching."
Contributing: Steve Holland, Stephanie Kelly
