How Vance and Walz plan to tackle the VP debate

Ohio Sen. JD Vance's biggest goal in Tuesday's debate against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be to cast him as too liberal for most Americans, Axios has learned.

• Walz's allies hope he'll focus on the threat of another Trump presidency, avoid getting flustered and show his folksy charm in his first extended national TV appearance.

Why it matters: Vice presidential debates often don't matter much, but the matchup between a first-term MAGA senator from the Rust Belt and a Minnesota teacher/coach-turned-congressman and governor offers a compelling contrast in styles.

Zoom in: Vance, 40, and Walz, 60, couldn't be more different. But they were chosen as VP nominees based on the same idea: that they could deliver working-class votes to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, respectively.

• Vance, the Republican nominee, is a Yale Law School-educated venture capitalist and author from humble beginnings. He used to call Trump an "idiot" — but now is among the ex-president's most vocal advocates.
• Walz, the Democratic nominee, is a product of small colleges in the Midwest who's never left his middle-class roots. He was a sound-bite machine for Harris — until she picked him for the Democratic ticket, and he began following her lead of giving few interviews.

What to watch for with Vance

Vance plans to challenge Walz's moderate image by picking at his tenure as Minnesota's governor.

• Don't be surprised to see Vance portray Walz as weak and overwhelmed by the civil unrest in Minneapolis that followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
• Vance also is likely to go after Walz for repeatedly misstating parts of his personal story.
• Those include Walz's history in the military and his statements that gave the false impression that he and his wife had used in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to become parents when they used a different procedure.
• Republicans also have hammered Walz for signing executive orders and laws that made Minnesota a "refuge" state for those seeking gender-affirming care and abortions.

Vance's debate braintrust includes three of his political aides, his wife Usha Vance and Trump senior adviser Jason Miller, Axios has learned.

• Vance has been having mock debates with Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who's been studying Walz's gubernatorial and congressional debates and doing opposition research on Vance, a person familiar with the preparations told Axios.

What to watch for with Walz

Walz is untested on the national stage, has said he's not a great debater, and even expressed some anxiety about letting Harris down if he does poorly on Tuesday.

• "Look, he's a Yale Law guy. I'm a public school teacher, so we know where he's at on that," he recently told MSNBC.
• Whether that's his way of lowering expectations remains to be seen. But Walz does have much at stake, and Harris' campaign has kept a tight lid on his strategy.
• An official familiar with Walz's plans acknowledged to Axios that it's a chance for the still-relatively unknown nominee to show Americans a glimpse of "Coach Walz" and other parts of his story that led Harris to put him on the ticket.

Walz — who famously has called Vance and Trump "weird" — will have plenty to choose from in attacking Vance: from Vance and Trump's repeated falsehoods about Haitian immigrants eating cats, to Vance's past comments about Trump's critics being "childless cat ladies."

• But allies expect Walz to focus less on personal attacks than on articulating Democrats' vision for America. He'll hit Trump and Vance on Project 2025 and other policy issues, almost certainly including abortion.
• Walz has some experience at that: During a gubernatorial debate in 2022, he effectively hammered his GOP rival on that issue.

In the past, the typically affable governor has gotten heated when attacked. Key to his performance Tuesday will be to push back on Vance's hits — and defend his record as governor — without coming off as angry or rattled.

• Walz has spent much of the last two weeks holed up in Minneapolis and Michigan, sparring against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
• Walz's debate brain trust is largely made up of advisers to the national campaign, including the Harris campaign's communication director, as the New York Times reported. His longtime aide and Minnesota chief of staff Chris Schmitter remains involved.

Despite Walz's tendency to ramble and trip himself up in unscripted settings, supporters believe his relative lack of polish could work in his favor.

• "The common sense way he talks about issues with Midwestern sensibilities and folksy charm [is something] people have really found refreshing," Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party chair Ken Martin said