MANCHESTER, N.H. (WHDH) - Neil Levesque, the Executive Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics on Tuesday eyed the road ahead for the newly-minted Harris-Walz campaign after Vice President Kamala Harris tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in the 2024 presidential election.
Harris announced Walz as her selection Tuesday morning and is expected to appear with him at a campaign rally in Philadelphia Tuesday night. The pair will then travel to Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada over the next week for a series of additional campaign stops.
Levesque said he expects Walz will be able to “slide right into this position” alongside Harris.
“He’s not going to create a lot of waves or negative animosity amongst that base that she really needs,” he told 7NEWS.
Walz beat out other candidates to be Harris’ running mate, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The sitting governor of Minnesota and a former congressman representing the state’s First Congressional District, Levesque said Walz likely won’t face criticism from Democratic base voters on key issues including policy about the war in Gaza and organized labor.
“Walz is interesting because he’s not really going to make the base, that base of liberal voters, mad about any of…the positions he’s taken in the past,” Levesque said.
“He’s sort of a governor from the midwest and he fits this sort of mold and doesn’t do any harm to the ticket,” he continued.
As they embark on their first series of campaign stops as a duo, Levesque said Walz and Harris have an opportunity to showcase their chemistry in a similar way that Bill Clinton and Al Gore did in their campaigns.
“If you look at Clinton and Gore, they teamed up and they went on this train ride across the country together and they really showed chemistry as a ticket and they showed that there was a lot of teamwork and cooperation and that they were sort of literally like wingmen,” Levesque said.
Levesque said Harris has outperformed expectations in recent weeks.
By taking a page out of the Clinton-Gore playbook, Levesque said Harris could again outperform expectations with the Walz selection.
“I think going across the country, showing that there’s chemistry between these two candidates, that they work together well, I think that’s key to the narrative before the convention,” he said.
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