Anna Moneymaker and Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
- Sen. JD Vance said Kamala Harris chose a "running mate who will be a San Francisco-style liberal."
- But Gov. Tim Walz hadn't even visited the city until last month.
- Meanwhile, Vance lived there for years, working as a venture capitalist.
During his first public remarks since Vice President Kamala Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio hit his new opponent as a "San Francisco-style liberal."
"Kamala Harris is running as a San Francisco liberal," the vice presidential candidate told reporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday. "She has governed as a San Francisco liberal, and she's chosen a running mate who will be a San Francisco-style liberal."
But while Harris' political career did begin in the Bay Area, including a seven-year stint as San Francisco District Attorney from 2004-2011, Walz has spent virtually no time in the city. In fact, his first time visiting the city was last month.
"Last week was my first time in San Francisco," Walz said on an episode of "The Ezra Klein Show" released on August 2. "That is the most beautiful city I've ever been in."
Walz said that he had been in San Francisco for meetings, and had taken a jog in the city's "Presidio" neighborhood. The Minnesota governor said the city was "exotic" to him, bemoaning that it had been "demonized."
Meanwhile, after Vance graduated law school in 2013, he moved to San Francisco, where he eventually began his career as a venture capitalist. Vance even wrote about his time in the city in an Atlantic essay in 2016 where he denounced his now-running mate, Donald Trump, and compared his appeal to that of opioids.
A few Saturdays ago, my wife and I spent the morning volunteering at a community garden in our San Francisco neighborhood. After a few hours of casual labor, we and the other volunteers dispersed to our respective destinations: tasty brunches, day trips to wine country, art-gallery tours. It was a perfectly normal day, by San Francisco standards.
He moved back to Ohio, where he grew up, in 2017. Vance has since made several trips back to the city, including for a fundraiser for Trump last week.
In a statement to Business Insider, Vance spokesperson William Martin said that Harris' and Walz's agenda "fits in perfectly in liberal enclaves like San Francisco — not so much in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin."
"Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want open borders and free healthcare for illegal immigrants," Martin said. "They both want to ban fracking and buy energy from dictators all over the world."
Vance also described Walz on Tuesday as "one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States Government at any level" and hit him for his response to the 2020 riots in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd, saying he "let rioters burn down" the city.
But the relatively general and all-purpose nature of the opening attacks — "San Francisco" is a relatively common buzzword that Republicans use to hit Democrats — reflects a campaign that's still scrambling to adjust to a suddenly changing ticket.
In fact, Vance even suggested that Walz may not actually be Harris's running mate, alluding to President Joe Biden's recent decision to withdraw from the race.
"First of all, the reason I didn't say a whole lot about Tim Walz is because the Democrats have showed a willingness to pull a little switcheroo on us," Vance told reporters. "I don't even know if we're actually going to get Tim Walz out of this campaign."
Harris chose Walz on Tuesday over several other contenders, including Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, following a vetting process that lasted roughly two weeks.
Vance is set to follow Harris and Walz across several more battleground states this week.