Card #11 Walz-Vance Facts

What’s at Stake for You in Election 2024?

On August 6, VP Kamala Harris announced that she had chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

• Minnesota Governor: Walz’s signature legislation includes free breakfast and lunch for all school children, a state child tax credit, free college tuition for qualifying Minnesotans, paid family and medical leave, ensuring voting rights, and the largest tax cut in the state’s history. He also implemented universal background checks for all gun sales and red flag laws.

• Healthcare and Reproductive Rights: Walz protected subsidized healthcare for 1.2 million Minnesotans, increased protections for seniors in assisted living facilities, and signed an act to cap insulin prices statewide. He helped codify reproductive freedom after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Walz issued executive orders forbidding state agencies from honoring out-of-state subpoenas and arrest warrants regarding people seeking reproductive care in Minnesota. 

• Additional positions and statements: In Congress, Walz supported codifying same-sex marriage and repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.  As governor, he signed laws protecting gender-affirming care, banning conversion therapy, and preventing library book bans over LGBTQ themes or characters. 

Walz defends his policies, such as the universal school meals bill, as common sense. He quipped: “What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own healthcare decisions.”

“We’re going to leave it all on the field. … That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, health care and housing are human rights, … That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry. Where no community is left behind. Where nobody gets told they don’t belong.”  VP Nominee Tim Walz, August 21, 2024

What’s at Stake for You in Election 2024?

On July 16, Mr. Trump announced that he had chosen Senator JD Vance as his running mate.

• Senate:  Ohio Senator since 2023, Mr. Vance co-sponsored a bill to reduce the price of insulin and a bill to criminalize gender-affirming care with 12-year prison penalties. In August 2024, Vance said he supported increasing the child tax credit to $5,000 per child. An opponent of abortion, he wrote the DOJ urging enforcement of the 1873 Comstock Act, effectively ending medication abortions.  

• Healthcare and Reproductive Rights: Vance described abortion as “the first political issue I can ever remember caring about” and has equated abortion with murder. He’s described himself as “pro-life as anyone,” and during a 2022 Senate race debate, said he’d support a federal standard restricting abortion. He opposed abortion exceptions for rape and incest in his 2022 campaign. Senator Vance now says he favors repealing the Affordable Care Act.

• Additional positions and statements: In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance used DARVO (a communication technique to avoid accountability:  Deny/Deflect, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). He continues to use DARVO when stating his positions on issues.  

But there’s more to Hillbilly Elegy than its factual merit. Silas House, an author and the Appalachian Studies chair at Berea College in Kentucky, said he looks at the book as “not a memoir but a treatise that traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes, less a way to explain the political rise of Trump than the actual start of the political rise of Vance.” 

Referring to Democrats, Vance said the country is being run by a bunch of “childless cat ladies,” that being childless makes people “more sociopathic,” and that people without children should be taxed at a higher rate.