PHILADELPHIA — Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (Ohio) sees one similarity with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the man he’s now tapped to face off against: “We’re White guys from the Midwest.’

But the two men — sons of America’s heartland, who both joined the military as teenagers — are far different on policy, Vance stressed in his first public remarks since Walz’s selection Tuesday as Vice President Harris’s running mate.

“I guess there’s similarities there, but what’s different is the actual ideas about how best to serve people, White, Black, or anything else in the Midwest and everywhere else,” Vance said.

Speaking about four miles from where Harris and Walz will make their first public appearance together, Vance said Walz was “one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government at any level,’ pointing to a new Minnesota law that lets any resident regardless of immigration status obtain a driver’s license. Vance also criticized Harris over her decision to not select Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, saying she was bending “the knee to the most radical elements of her party.’ Democrats have sought to re-engage progressives angered by the Biden administration’s aid to Israel amid the conflict in Gaza, and Shapiro, who is Jewish and has been supportive of Israel, was seen by some as a risky choice.

In a statement after Vance’s comments, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler highlighted Walz’s biography as a veteran, teacher and football coach before his career in politics. Walz flipped a Republican-held congressional district in 2006 and held the seat for five terms before running for governor in 2018.

“Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz will spend the next 91 days crisscrossing the country on a message of opportunity, building up the middle class instead of cutting taxes for the rich, and fighting for our fundamental freedoms, including reproductive freedom,” Tyler said.

Meanwhile, Walz has formed a key part of the recent messaging from Democrats by labeling Vance and Trump as “weird,’ which the Harris campaign and surrogates have adopted. A Harris campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preview Walz’s remarks, said the governor will further define the contrast between the tickets’ policy differences, specifically focusing on abortion, health care and the middle class.

Vance said he would not commit to debating Walz until he is confirmed as the vice-presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this month. He told reporters earlier on his campaign plane that he had called Walz to wish him congratulations. Walz didn’t answer but he left a message.

The Philadelphia audience, made up of local Republicans invited to the closed event, listened to stories of Pennsylvania families who lost loved ones to fentanyl overdoses and cheered as Vance went after Harris’s position on border security

Vance will follow Harris and Walz on the campaign trail this week as they embark on a tour of battleground states, in Wisconsin and Michigan on Tuesday and North Carolina on Wednesday. (Harris postponed events in North Carolina because of Tropical Storm Debby as of Tuesday but Vance has not moved his scheduled events.)

Vance also previewed what is expected to be an ongoing attack line against Walz, tying him to images of burning buildings during the racial justice protests in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 during Walz’s first term as governor. Republican strategists have foreshadowed that such messaging will become increasingly common in ads and events.

“Nobody knows who Tim Walz is outside of Minnesota,” said Mike Berg, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Walz will be introduced to Midwestern voters as the governor who let Minnesota burn during the 2020 riots and supported making Minnesota a sanctuary state.”

In the audience at Vance’s event, Janet DePaul, a Pennsylvania voter in her 50s, said she hadn’t realized Walz was governor of Minnesota during the protests until Vance brought it up — cementing her belief that Walz was left-wing.

“I didn’t realize that he let the rioting go on,” she said.

On the other hand, Deborah McGinley, a 53-year-old Pennsylvania voter, said she didn’t come away with any different impression of Walz than she already had from listening to friends in Minnesota who complained about the destruction caused by protests in 2020. She said she understood why Vance instead focused most of his remarks on introducing himself to voters there for the first time and talking about issues.

“He is far, far left for me,” she said of Walz. “My mind would have never been changed with what JD was saying.”

Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest developments in the 2024 election — now with more “you betcha,” “uff da,” hot dish and walleye.

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The big moment

The two-week sprint to become the new Democratic vice-presidential pick concluded Tuesday with a winner few had predicted at the outset: Tim Walz. The formerly somewhat obscure — at least on the national stage — Minnesota governor now joins Vice President Harris for a three-month race to the presidential election.

And if Republicans weren’t prepared for the sudden shift at the top of the Democratic ticket from President Biden to Harris, they were loaded for bear this time, with a more focused message. They blanketed inboxes and social media with attacks on Walz. The prevailing talking point: that a “dangerously liberal” presidential candidate just picked a “dangerously liberal” running mate.

“RNC Statement on Dangerously Liberal Harris-Walz Ticket,” read the Republican National Committee’s press release.

“Even worse than Dangerously Liberal and Crooked Kamala Harris,” Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign said in a fundraising email.

“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz: Weak, Failed, Dangerously Liberal,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.

“Too Weird. Too Radical,” concluded an ad from the pro-Trump Make America Great Again super PAC.

It’s indeed an extension of the GOP playbook against Harris. As for how it will play?

There is no question that, among the reported finalists for the job, Walz is probably the most pleasing to liberals. But that’s in large part a reflection of the competition; the reported alternatives hailed from swing and even red-leaning states that require a more moderate approach and where the balance of power isn’t as conducive to the Democratic agenda.

Walz, by contrast, has been able to push through left-leaning policies in Minnesota with narrow Democratic majorities — a remarkable success story, the merits of the policies aside.

Among the pieces of legislation signed into law: universal school lunches; universal gun background checks and a “red flag” law; abortion rights; paid family and medical leave; rights to gender-affirming care (the legislation the PAC ad focused on); restoring the rights of felons to vote; legalizing recreational marijuana; and allowing undocumented Minnesotans to apply for driver’s licenses.

Republicans have also signaled they intend to criticize Walz for pandemic-era restrictions, including a mask mandate, as well as his response to the riots that followed George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis at the hands of police. (Some have criticized Walz for not more quickly dispatching the National Guard.)

Democrats argue that while Democratic governors in more divided states haven’t gotten such policies enacted, that is more a reflection of the internal political obstacles they faced rather than the popularity of the proposals. The concepts behind the gun bills, for instance, have overwhelming support in polls. Abortion rights are increasingly popular. Mask mandates have fallen in popularity, but they were once quite popular, and even red states had them.

If there are potential liabilities with swing voters, you might see them in such things as the “trans refuge” bill that Walz signed to protect those seeking gender-affirming care (a divisive topic), the driver’s license law (a subject of previous GOP focus that could be pitched as being soft on the border crisis), and the riots (which could feed into GOP claims that Democrats are soft on crime).

But in politics, a lot depends on the messenger and how they sell their record. And on a personal level, Walz certainly doesn’t project “raging liberal.”

His roots are about as far from the East and West Coasts as is possible, literally; he was born in a small Nebraska town and came of political age in southern Minnesota. He embodies a Midwestern style that Harris’s campaign hopes will attract voters in such must-win states as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He’s a veteran who focused heavily on veterans issues in Congress, and he is a former longtime teacher and football coach. He has talked about how he’s a gun owner and was featured in Guns & Ammo magazine in 2016. And, at one point, he said he didn’t think Nancy Pelosi should be House speaker.

Before he was a governor, Walz was a member of Congress representing a Republican-leaning, somewhat rural southern Minnesota district; he won reelection in 2016 even as Trump was carrying it by 15 points.

Walz’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection win was a bit less resounding, basically matching Biden’s seven-point margin from two years prior. But that 2016 campaign would seem to suggest that Walz knows how to navigate a difficult political environment and appeal to swing voters.

He’ll do it now with more of an established record, oodles more scrutiny and on a much bigger stage — a stage that as recently as mid-July few foresaw Tim Walz being on.

A poll number to remember

44 percent

That is the percentage of registered voters in a CBS News-YouGov poll released Sunday that described Harris as “very liberal.” That’s notably higher than the percentage who called Trump “very conservative” (37 percent).

It’s something of a carryover from the race between Trump and Biden; a June Gallup poll showed 56 percent viewed Biden as “too liberal,” while 44 percent viewed Trump as “too conservative.” (That’s a slightly different question, but it’s unlikely that swing voters view being “very liberal” as an asset.)

That reinforces how much of an issue Harris’s perceived ideology could be — along with the balancing act she faced in selecting a running mate.

Many of the GOP attacks on Harris stem from positions she staked out in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, when she was focused on appealing to the left. They included banning fracking and offshore drilling, as well as a mandatory gun buyback program and supporting the Green New Deal. Harris has walked back some of those positions of late.

Take a moment to read:

• “Tim Walz’s journey from high school football coach to VP candidate” (Washington Post)
• “Where Tim Walz stands on key issues: Abortion, climate, marijuana and more” (Washington Post)
• “In two weeks, Harris’s campaign has reset the electoral map” (Washington Post)
• “$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt” (Washington Post)
• “The presidential race shifts — modestly, so far — toward Harris” (Washington Post)
• “What’s shaping up as tension points between Harris and the left” (Politico)

A month ago, the 2024 presidential election was slated to feature the two oldest candidates in American history. President Biden, 81, was seeking to defend his position in the face of a challenge from former president Donald Trump, 78.

Despite the relatively narrow difference in their ages, polling showed that the issue posed more of a challenge for the incumbent than the former president. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 58 percent of Americans viewed both candidates as too old for another term as president, with another (heavily Republican) quarter saying that only Biden was. The presidential debate in late June cemented concerns about Biden’s age, and a month later he passed the baton to Vice President Harris, 59.

You know all this. What you might not realize is that, despite poll findings like the one cited above, the question of age has largely faded to the background — though the question of a generational power transition has not.

One interesting effect of Biden’s poor performance in that first debate is that while perceptions of his unfitness rose, so did those perceptions for Trump. In early June, YouGov polling conducted for the Economist found that 26 percent of Americans thought Trump’s age severely limited his ability to do the job of president. By late July, after Biden dropped out, more than a third said that about Trump.

But that’s largely because of a big jump in the number of Democrats who say that Trump’s age is a severe limitation. There was a nearly 20-point increase among Democrats — perhaps in part because they felt newly free to suggest that age might be a hindrance to a candidacy.

There was another change since June, too: Both major-party candidates have now selected their running mates. Trump chose Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as the Republican convention began last month. On Tuesday, Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

Vance is the youngest member of a presidential ticket in decades, the first member of the millennial generation to be a major-party nominee for president or vice president. Walz, on the other hand, was born in 1964 — the same year as Harris.

When Vance was first named, I made the chart below to show his unique position as a millennial. Harris and Walz — like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Trump, Barack Obama and myriad other candidates before them — are members of the baby boom generation.

Since this question of generational identity comes up not infrequently (and since I have some expertise on the subject), it’s worth noting that the baby boom as a demographic event wrapped up in mid-1964, while the generation is generally said to apply to everyone born that year. In other words, Walz (born in April) was a member of the baby boom itself, while Harris (born in October) wasn’t. Whether this makes her the second member of Gen X to be on a major-party ticket (after former Wisconsin congressman Paul D. Ryan) is up to your own subjective determination.

Notice on the above chart, though, that Harris and Walz (those overlapping circles at the right-most boundary of boomers and Gen X) sit closer to Trump than to Vance. Each will be 60 by the end of the year, giving them a cumulative age of 120 years — more than the 118 years of the Trump-Vance ticket. Each is above the 116.3-year-old average since 1976.

But age, as the saying has it, ain’t nothing but a number. For at least one prominent member of the Democratic coalition, the Walz pick marks a transition in political thinking.

“It does feel like a generational shift,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in a live stream on Instagram a few hours after the Walz announcement. “And by that I mean the kinds of generational politics that the Democratic Party is trying to practice now is a real departure from years past.”

She noted that “a generational shift doesn’t just mean that you’re electing younger people,” pointing to support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries. Harris’s selection of Walz, while a reinforcement of the dominance of the baby boom (see caveats above) was nonetheless in her estimation a marked shift in how Democrats do politics, one respecting the ideology of younger voters. This is a useful argument for her to make as one of the figures most crucial to energizing young voters, but that doesn’t mean she is incorrect or insincere in making it.

This question of age, though? Revamped. Trump would be older at this point in a second term than Biden is now, but he has largely escaped similar scrutiny (in large part because Biden’s manifestations of his age were more obvious). The Democratic nominee is far younger, but the ticket slightly older — even though it does mark a generational shift in either delineation (how you draw the baby boom boundary) or approach (to hear Ocasio-Cortez tell it).

It is, to put it glibly, not the same old race.

Voters in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District will head to the polls Tuesday as Rep. Cori Bush fights to hold on to her seat in the Democratic primary against St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell, who is backed by a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. The race between two liberal Black candidates in this district gets to the heart of a fissure within the Democratic Party over the United States’ unwavering support of Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

While the vote in Bush’s primary will be among the most hotly contested on Tuesday, it is one in a slew of House, Senate and gubernatorial races playing out in Missouri, Michigan and Washington.

In 2021, Bush became the district’s first Black congresswoman after defeating Rep. William Lacy Clay, a centrist Democrat who had held the office for two decades.

Her opponent, Bell, is backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), long considered to be Washington’s most powerful lobbying force, and he headed into the primary’s home stretch with a sizable monetary advantage. By the end of June, Bell had four times as much cash on hand as Bush. Outside groups — mostly the pro-Israel lobby, incensed by her pro-Palestinian views — spent more than $12 million in ads that attacked Bush and supported Bell, according to Washington nonprofit OpenSecrets.

As the Gaza war stretches into its 10th month, AIPAC and other groups in the pro-Israel lobby are fighting to shut down criticism of Israel in Congress by pouring millions of dollars into races against several members of “the Squad,” a group of House Democrats on the party’s left flank, who have criticized the Israeli government amid its war in Gaza. After the primary loss of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in June, Bush was their next target.

But at the heart of the race is a question of how voters want the Democratic Party to look going forward. The two candidates’ contrasting opinions on Israel’s war on Gaza, which is being waged 6,500 miles away, will make little difference in how most people choose, voters told The Washington Post. Instead, it has become a matter of style over substance, with Bell portraying himself as a more pragmatic choice.

Both candidates are facing allegations of improper behavior: Bush is under federal investigation over allegations that she misused campaign funds to hire her husband to provide security, while Bell is awaiting a civil trial over allegations that he fired people based on their gender, age and race. Both candidates have denied wrongdoing.

In a district Joe Biden carried by more than 60 points in 2020, the winner of Tuesday’s primary heads into November’s election as the strong favorite.

Democratic Senate primary in Missouri

Three Democrats are battling Tuesday in a race to determine who will face Sen. Josh Hawley in November. Hawley is running unopposed in the Republican primary.

Marine veteran Lucas Kunce is considered the front-runner against state Sen. Karla May and December Harmon, a community activist.

Wesley Bell had previously been a candidate in the Senate primary until he announced in October that he would mount a primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Cori Bush.

Democrats largely rallied around Kunce, who narrowly lost the Democratic nomination for Senate two years ago. He had a major financial advantage over May, raising over $10 million in his campaign, compared with just more than $50,000 that May raised this cycle, according to financial disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Missouri Democratic gubernatorial primary

Of the five Democratic candidates on Missouri’s gubernatorial ballot, the primary race is largely a contest between state Rep. Crystal Quade and business executive Mike Hamra.

Quade, who was elected to the Missouri House in 2016 and serves as its minority floor leader, a position she has held since 2019. Previously, she worked for a nonprofit dedicated to helping disadvantaged students in Missouri.

Hamra is the chief executive of Hamra Enterprises, his family’s business that operates several well-known food franchises, including Wendy’s and Panera Bread. He previously worked in the Commerce Department during the Clinton administration.

Missouri Republican gubernatorial primary

The three front-runners in Missouri’s GOP primary race for governor — Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel — align closely with Donald Trump’s policies, and each received the former president’s endorsement to replace the state’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, who is term-limited.

“All have had excellent careers, and have been with me from the beginning,” Trump wrote in a July 27 Truth Social post, adding: “Choose any one of them — You can’t go wrong!”

Parson has endorsed Kehoe, as have several agricultural and law enforcement groups. Before becoming lieutenant governor, Kehoe served on the state’s Highway and Transportation Commission and in the state Senate, where he was the majority floor leader for three years.

Ashcroft, the son of former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft, was first elected to the secretary of state post in 2016. In 2014, he had an unsuccessful run for the state Senate. Representing St. Charles County in the state Senate, Eigel previously served in the U.S. Air Force.

Democratic Senate primary in Michigan

One of the most closely followed races in Michigan is the race to replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D), who announced in January 2023 that she would not seek reelection to a fifth term. The once-crowded race is now a competition between three-term Rep. Elissa Slotkin and actor Hill Harper, a first-time political candidate.

The open Senate seat in Michigan is among a handful expected to help determine which party controls the chamber next year.

Slotkin, who has consistently dominated the race, has a sizable financial advantage over her competitors, raising more than the rest of the Democratic and Republican primary candidates combined.

The former CIA analyst and Defense Department official, who is Jewish, has faced criticism in Michigan — home to the largest population of Arab Americans in the country — for not being harder on Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza.

Harper, best known for his role in “The Good Doctor,” called for a cease-fire in the war, which attracted Arab American support in the state.

Republican Senate primary in Michigan

While Republicans have united behind former congressman Mike Rogers, who has been endorsed by Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the heavy favorite faces competition from underdogs.

Fellow former congressman Justin Amash and physician Sherry O’Donnell are also on the ballot. Entrepreneur Sandy Pensler also appears despite his withdrawal from the race several weeks ago. He endorsed Rogers — who previously served as an FBI special agent and chaired the House Intelligence Committee — at a rally with Trump last month.

Michigan Republicans haven’t won a U.S. Senate race in the state since 1994. And the race to replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D), who announced in January 2023 that she would not seek reelection, could prove key in determining the balance of power in Congress’s upper chamber.

Michigan’s 7th District primaries

In one of the most competitive House races in the country, left open by Slotkin’s Senate race, both parties’ candidates ran unopposed Tuesday.

The table is already set for a November battle between Democrat Curtis Hertel Jr. and Republican Tom Barrett as the parties battle for control in the House, where Republicans hold a narrow majority.

Michigan’s 8th District Democratic primary

In another Michigan seat that the Democrats are forced to defend without an incumbent this year — following the retirement of Rep. Daniel Kildee — the competition is down to three.

Kildee, who served the Flint area since 2013 after taking over from his uncle, who served in Congress for 36 years, has endorsed state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet.

Pamela Pugh, the state’s education board president, and Matt Collier, the former mayor of Flint, are also battling for the party’s nomination.

McDonald Rivet came into the race just one year into her four-year Senate term. She said in an interview with the AP that Kildee called her and encouraged her to run for his seat.

Michigan’s 8th District Republican primary

Three Republicans are vying to flip this hotly contested seat come November in the wake of Kildee’s retirement.

Paul Junge, a former TV anchor, is making another bid for the seat after losing by more than 10 points to Kildee in 2022. Mary Draves, a former chemical manufacturing executive at Dow Inc., and Anthony Hudson, a trucking company owner, are battling him in the race.

Junge is a clear favorite for the nomination, having vastly outraised his opponents. This race marks his third time running for the seat. He previously served in the Trump administration at the Department of Homeland Security.

Michigan’s 13th District Democratic primary

In this heavily Democratic district, Tuesday’s primary is likely to produce November’s winner. Rep. Shri Thanedar is facing off with Mary Waters, an at-large member of the Detroit City Council, and attorney Shakira Lynn Hawkins.

Former state senator Adam Hollier did not qualify for the ballot after the Wayne County clerk determined in May that he had not collected enough voter signatures.

Thanedar, who was elected in 2022, faced a push from members within his own party to replace him in the August primary, spearheaded by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. Other state Democratic officials also threw their support behind Waters as a replacement.

Washington gubernatorial primary

When Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), the longest-serving governor in the country, announced he would not seek reelection, he opened the floodgates for more than two dozen candidates to compete for a spot on the November ballot. Under the state’s primary system, the top two vote-getters will advance to the general election regardless of party.

Polls show the two front-runners are state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) and former congressman Dave Reichert (R).

Ferguson, who received Inslee’s endorsement, served for a decade on the King County Council before his election as the state’s attorney general. In recent years, he, alongside several other Democratic attorneys general in the country, has pursued legal challenges against Republicans on hot-button issues including abortion and gun control.

A moderate Republican, Reichert spent seven terms in Congress before retiring in 2019. Before that, he gained national recognition for his work as a county sheriff in Washington, where he was on a task force that captured the “Green River Killer.” If Reichert makes the November ballot and wins, it would mark the end of a nearly 40-year dry spell in the governor’s office for the Republican Party, whose last successful candidate was John Dennis Spellman in 1980.

Washington’s 3rd District primary

This Republican-leaning district is set to be a key race in November in what local media has described as a “grudge match.” Democrats served an upset here in 2022, when Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez flipped the seat in the midterms. Now, right-wing Army veteran Joe Kent wants it back. Gluesenkamp Perez has drastically outraised her primary challengers and has a fairly direct line to November.

Kent has establishment support from the Washington state GOP but is facing competition from local legislator Leslie Lewallen, who has local GOP support. The latter believes she will be more palatable in the general election, pushing back on Kent’s election conspiracy theories and associations with far-right extremists.

Washington’s 4th District primary

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), the incumbent in the state’s deep-red 4th Congressional District, faces two credible challengers, both propelled in part by endorsements from Trump.

Having won reelection in the district since 2014, Newhouse on Tuesday faces off against Tiffany Smiley, a former Republican Senate candidate who lost to Sen. Patty Murray (D) in 2022, and Jerrod Sessler, who has never held public office but received an early endorsement from Trump. Newhouse is one of only two House Republicans who remain in office of the 10 who voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Of the other eight, four lost their reelection bids during the primaries and four others retired.

In a dig at Newhouse in April, Trump endorsed Sessler on Truth Social, writing that the candidate has his “Complete and Total Endorsement — He will never let you down!!!”

On Saturday, Trump extended a late endorsement to Smiley, who he described as a “tremendous America First Candidate.” He added that Newhouse was a “weak and pathetic” opponent who “stupidly voted to impeach me for absolutely no reason.”

In 2022, Newhouse fought off Sessler and five other GOP candidates. Sessler is a business executive and Navy veteran. Smiley is a former nurse who has since focused on advocacy work for veterans.

Washington’s 5th District primary

After nearly two decades representing Washington’s 5th Congressional District, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R) in February announced that she would not run for reelection. Candidates from both parties made for a crowded primary race Tuesday to replace McMorris Rodgers, who chaired the influential House Energy and Commerce Committee and was the first woman to do so.

With Washington’s primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes, regardless of party, will face off in the November general election for the district, which includes Spokane, the state’s second-largest city.

The top Republican contenders in the race for the seat are state Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber and Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner. Before Maycumber was elected to her Washington House seat in 2017, she worked in biomedical research and law enforcement and served as a school board member. Baumgartner, who is serving his second term as Spokane County’s treasurer, was a state senator for eight years and worked for the State Department as an officer in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Maycumber and Baumgartner face Democratic challengers Bernadine Bank and Carmela Conroy. Bank worked for decades as a gynecologist in Spokane and, in 2022, began working with the local Democratic Party. Conroy worked as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Spokane County in the 1990s before spending about two decades with the State Department in various roles.

Washington’s 6th District primary

With Rep. Derek Kilmer (D), who has held the seat since 2013, not running for reelection, the race to succeed him has two Democratic front-runners: Hilary Franz, the state’s commissioner of public lands, and state Sen. Emily Randall.

Each received high-profile endorsements from across the state and raised more than $1 million each. Republican state Sen. Drew MacEwan is hoping to flip the seat, which has been won by Democrats for the past 60 years, but has raised significantly less than his Democratic opponents. The race this cycle saw record-breaking outside spending, with a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC, Protect Progress, pumping $1.5 million into ads to support Randall.

Milwaukee County prosecutors charged four people with murder Tuesday after they beat and restrained a man outside a hotel in June.

D’Vontaye Mitchell, 43, died June 30 after four Hyatt Regency Milwaukee employees dragged him from the hotel and pinned him face down to the concrete.

His family members have said they believe he was having a mental health episode.

On Tuesday, the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office charged Devin W Johnson-Carson, 23; Brandon LaDaniel Turner, 35; Herbert T Williamson, 53; Todd Alan Erickson, 60, with murder in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

Aimbridge Hospitality, which operates the hotel, said last month that it fired several employees after Mitchell’s death. It was not immediately clear whether the four people who were charged had been employed by the hotel.

The Milwaukee County medical examiner’s office ruled Mitchell’s death a homicide caused by restraint asphyxia and the effects of cocaine and methamphetamine.

Ben Brasch, Anumita Kaur, Jiselle Lee and Justine McDaniel contributed to this report, which will be updated.

Vice President Harris on Sunday took the final step of her running-mate selection process, interviewing the three men who had survived her team’s vetting process — Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. But by then, the selection was in fact largely down to two.

Walz and Shapiro had risen to the top of the pool, according to a person familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential matter. While Kelly, a former fighter pilot and astronaut, had a stellar resume, some on Harris’s team thought he was an uninspiring public speaker who would not generate excitement on the campaign trail.

“Shapiro could raise lots of money, very sharp politically and well-versed,” the person said. “And Walz was regular-guy sharp. His appeal will be that he could be anyone in America who became vice president.” After those interviews on Sunday, Shapiro told the vice president’s team that he was struggling with the prospect of leaving his job as governor if he was chosen, according to another person close to the selection process.

By Monday night, Harris had made her decision: Walz would be her running mate.

Harris’s selection process was the fastest in recent memory, unfolding against a backdrop of political turbulence and forcing her to make arguably the most important decision of her candidacy at the same time she was racing around the country introducing herself to voters. What ultimately sold Harris on Walz, according to people familiar with the process, was their easy rapport as well as his governing record in Minnesota.

In some ways, the process began even before Harris rose to the top of the ticket. In the days and weeks after President Biden’s halting debate performance on June 27 — as he doubled down on his insistence that he would remain in the race despite rising backlash from his party — some Democratic donors grew restless and began funding a preliminary process for vice-presidential picks if Biden did decide to exit the race. The effort was independent of the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

After Biden stunned the political world on July 21 by announcing he would “stand down,” he endorsed Harris, and within days, attention turned to her running-mate choice.

Former attorney general Eric Holder’s firm, Covington and Burling, began drafting lists of potential running mates — almost all of whom were White men, reflecting an assumption that voters would prefer a White male running mate for the first woman of color leading a major-party presidential ticket. Ultimately they concluded that nine prospects were worth vetting.

On July 23, just two days after Biden stepped aside, Walz appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and made a seemingly off-handed comment that may have sealed his future. “It’s true: These guys are just weird,” Walz said of Republican nominee Donald Trump and his allies. “They’re running for the he-man woman haters’ club or something.”

The notion that Trump, his running mate Sen. JD Vance (Ohio) and their allies were “weird” instantly caught on among Democrats and resonated enough among swing voters that some Republicans felt the need to push back. And it captured what the Harris team liked about Walz: His ability to take on Trump with a lighter touch, landing a hard blow without thundering about existential threats.

Six days later, on July 29, two of those being considered — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper — took themselves out of contention, saying in different ways that they wanted to focus on their home states.

The Harris team had set itself a deadline of Aug. 7 to make the choice, to avoid running afoul of early ballot requirements in some states. And with just over a week to go, the list of finalists was down to six: Walz, Kelly, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Shapiro and Govs. Steve Beshear of Kentucky and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.

Ten Harris aides participated in the initial vetting process, including campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, top adviser Cedric L. Richmond and campaign chief of staff Sheila Nix. Soon enough, Democratic donors and groups began jockeying aggressively for their preferred candidates and attacking those they opposed, sometimes through leaks.

Shapiro quickly emerged as a lightning rod. Progressive groups criticized comments he’d made last spring comparing pro-Palestinian college protesters to the Ku Klux Klan and urging the University of Pennsylvania to forcefully break up their encampments. Teachers unions also voiced concerns about Shapiro because of his support of school vouchers.

The National Women’s Defense League, a nonpartisan group that confronts sexual harassment by political leaders, asked the Harris campaign to consider whether Shapiro had mishandled allegations against top aides last year, when his office paid a $295,000 settlement to a staffer who filed a complaint alleging she was sexually harassed by two of the governor’s senior aides.

Shapiro denounced sexual harassment in a statement by his spokesperson to the New York Times last week, adding that he “was not aware of the complaint or investigation until months after the complaint was filed.”

The Pennsylvania governor’s supporters argued that he was a powerful, charismatic speaker, and that his centrist politics were just what the Democrats needed to attract swing voters. It remains unclear whether the outside complaints affected Harris’s decision to pass him over; a campaign official said her rapport with Walz, more than any opposition research, was the key factor in her decision.

Kelly, a retired astronaut and Navy captain, faced opposition from some labor groups after he opposed pro-union legislation in Congress. While Harris aides felt Kelly had a stellar resume, some feared he was an uninspiring public speaker who would not generate excitement on the campaign trail, according to two people familiar with the process, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Something of an unofficial lobbying campaign emerged for Walz by Democrats in Congress who had served with him when he was in the House from 2007 through 2019. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said she shared “what I know about him as a leader and as a man” with people advising Harris, in the hope it would be helpful to the vice president.

“The guy just has an infectious joy in the work that he does. He takes the work that he does really seriously, but he doesn’t take himself really seriously,” Smith said in an interview. “He seems like a regular person because he is a regular person.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who served with Walz in the House and pushed for his selection, said Walz’s candidacy was boosted by strong support from labor unions.

“The reason I like him — it’s not complicated — I think he is kind of a down-to-earth guy, plain-spoken. I think he communicates well with working-class people,” Sanders said in an interview. “I like the idea that he is a former teacher, public school teacher, the fact that he’s a football coach, he’s a veteran. And more than being a veteran, when he was in the House, he was a strong advocate for veterans’ rights.”

And in fact, Walz had been on the radar of the Biden-Harris team for a year. Not many Democratic leaders had braved the Iowa County Fair last August, when a primary battle was raging between Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans, all of them aiming harsh rhetoric at each other — and at Democrats.

But Walz showed up, at the request of the Biden campaign. And the Minnesota governor made a surprising splash at the fair, chomping a pork chop on a stick, talking up the administration’s accomplishments, teasing that his state’s fair was superior and generally needling Republicans.

Most Americans didn’t notice — but top Biden-Harris advisers did, and that’s when their “Walz obsession” began, according to one campaign official.

By Thursday, the vetting process, led by Holder and former White House counsel Dana Remus, concluded, setting the stage for the final intensive days of the selection process. Holder and Remus compiled their findings to present to a Friday meeting of a group of Harris confidants, who would then decide who would move on to the final round.

A three-person panel comprised of Richmond, former labor secretary Marty Walsh and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) then interviewed the finalists, who were questioned on specific aspects of their record. Walz, for example, was asked about his handling of the crisis that erupted after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Shapiro was quizzed about his views on Gaza and Israel, among many other facets of their records, according to a person familiar with the process, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

On Saturday, the panel presented its findings and recommendations to Harris at the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory, where she was holed up for the weekend to make her selection.

The outside pressure continued up to the last minute. On Sunday morning, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that his preferred candidate was Beshear, but “we really like Tim Walz from Minnesota also, think he’s an awesome guy for labor, 100 percent behind labor.”

Harris conducted in-person interviews with Walz, Shapiro and Kelly, then held meetings with her closest aides as she zeroed in on her decision.

Her staff prepared campaign materials for all three candidates — including website graphics, videos, talking points and stump speeches — in case her decision went into Tuesday morning.

In the end, Harris was energized by her personal chemistry with Walz, whom she knew from her time as vice president, the people familiar with the process said. He had accompanied her, for instance, when she visited Minnesota in March, becoming the first sitting vice president to visit a clinic that performs abortions.

Harris’s team was also taken with Walz’s background, which they hoped would have a broad appeal in Midwestern states and rural areas of states such as Georgia and North Carolina. Walz is a hunter and gun owner who won a House seat in a conservative-leaning district later captured by Trump. Harris aides also point to Walz’s record in Minnesota, including a social welfare program that provided free lunches to public school students, a ban on junk fees and paid parental leave.

Walz has also spoken about his family’s personal experience with IVF, which he said allowed him and his wife to have one of their two children after they could not conceive for the first eight years of their marriage — a point Harris highlighted in her official announcement, and one that plays into the Democrats’ emphasis on reproductive rights.

The prospects spent Monday awaiting word. Kelly and his wife, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), passed the time at their home in Washington as reporters scouted out their place back in Tucson, according to a person familiar with the senator’s journey through the vetting process who was not authorized to talk publicly about it. They watched movies and television together and took a trip to the National Air and Space Museum.

On Tuesday morning, the call came. Kelly had not been chosen. The senator called his core group of advisers and they immediately got to work on a statement conveying support for Walz.

At least initially, Walz’s selection achieved its aim of bringing Democrats together. It drew praise from centrist Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-W.Va.) as well as liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). On Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez mused during an Instagram live about “the last time Senator Manchin and I, respectfully, were on the same side of an issue.”

Sarah Blaskey and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this report.

A Virginia man was arrested Monday and charged with making threats against Vice President Harris, the Justice Department announced in a news release.

Frank Carillo, 66, of Winchester, Va., wrote thousands of posts and replies over the past year on the conservative social media platform Gettr, targeting several public officials such as Harris, President Biden and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

Carillo allegedly made numerous violent comments and graphic death threats directed at Harris on Gettr after she had started running for president. Carillo allegedly wrote in July that “Harris is going to regret ever trying to become president” and “Just for being a Democrat you’re going to die.”

Carillo also made numerous posts about firearms and shooting people, including immigrants and Muslims, the complaint alleged, and wrote that he had an “AR-15 locked and loaded.”

His posts were first identified in July by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Arizona, which alerted the FBI to threats made on Gettr against that county’s recorder, the complaint states. The office has faced numerous violent threats after Donald Trump made false claims that his loss in the county during the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Investigators linked phone numbers and email addresses associated with the Gettr account that made the threatening posts to Carillo in Virginia, the complaint alleged. FBI agents searched Carillo’s residence last week and seized a handgun and an assault-style rifle, according to the complaint.

Carillo, who was present during the search, allegedly said, “This is ridiculous, for a comment. I guess I’m gonna need a lawyer.”

If convicted of threatening to kill the vice president, Carillo could face up to five years in prison.

An attorney for Carillo declined to comment. Carillo made an initial court appearance Monday and is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.

When Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, added Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to her ticket on Tuesday, she touted him as a coach and educator. Walz, in accepting the role, likened his excitement to “the first day of school.”

The message was clear: This man is a teacher.

Almost three decades ago, however, Walz nearly gave up the career that’s now at the center of his political identity. The reason was a drunken-driving incident in northwestern Nebraska, where he was a 31-year-old teacher and football coach at the time.

Late on a Saturday in September 1995, Walz was driving a silver Mazda on Route 385 outside Alliance, Neb., according to police records. He was going 96 mph in a 55-mph zone when he was pulled over by a Nebraska state trooper, the records show.

According to the documents, the trooper smelled alcohol and administered a field sobriety test, which Walz failed. The young teacher then also failed a preliminary breath test. Walz submitted to a blood test at a nearby hospital before being booked at the county jail, charged with driving under the influence.

The following year, Walz pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving, a misdemeanor, and paid a fine of $200. In a hearing about the plea agreement, Walz’s attorney told a judge that his client had resigned all extracurricular responsibilities at Alliance High School, including his coaching role, and offered to resign his teaching position as well, according to a hearing transcript.

“He, I think, takes the position that he’s a role model for the students there,” said the attorney, Russell Harford. “He let them down, he let himself down. Because of that, he was ready to resign his position. Fortunately, the principal talked him out of resigning from school.”

Alliance’s principal at the time, Richard W. Boness, died earlier this year; Harford did not respond to a request for comment. The prosecutor in the case, Rex C. Nowlan, said he couldn’t recall details of the incident and that he had no other interactions with Walz when he lived in Nebraska.

The high school’s head football coach in that era, Jeff Tomlin, said that Walz worked especially with the team’s linebackers and that it was a loss for the players when he quit coaching after his arrest.

“He’s a man of conviction,” Tomlin said Tuesday in an interview with The Washington Post. “He’s a man of principle. He did what he felt was right. We supported that.”

Harford, the attorney, told the court that Walz had turned the episode into a teaching opportunity. “Now he is, I guess, ministering, so to speak, to the students about the bad things that can happen to you if you drink and drive and get caught for drinking and driving,” he said.

Walz lost his license for 90 days, his attorney said. He no longer drinks, saying he prefers Diet Mountain Dew.

Walz left Nebraska in 1996 and relocated to Mankato, Minn., where he continued teaching and coaching football. It would be another decade before he entered politics.

The arrest has come up from time to time as he has pursued elected office, but it hasn’t been a primary line of attack for his opponents. In 2006, when he first ran for Congress, Walz’s campaign manager at the time offered an account of the arrest that contradicted court records.

The campaign manager, Kerry Greeley, told the Post Bulletin, a newspaper in Rochester, Minn., that Walz was speeding but not drunk and that the incident stemmed from a misunderstanding caused by Walz’s partial deafness. Walz suffered hearing loss during his time in a field artillery regiment in the National Guard, a condition for which he underwent surgery in 2005.

“He couldn’t understand what the officer was saying to him,” said Greeley, who appears only to have worked for Walz on his 2006 campaign, according to her LinkedIn profile, and who did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2018, however, when Walz ran for governor, he took responsibility for failing the field sobriety and breath tests in an interview with the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, saying he had been watching college football with friends. His wife, Gwen Walz, a fellow teacher, recalled telling him, “You have obligations to people. You can’t make dumb choices.”

In response to questions about the episode, a spokesman for the Harris-Walz campaign pointed to the Star Tribune interview and declined to comment further.

Walz is among a long list of politicians who have come to regret reckless choices made behind the wheel. As a candidate for president in 2000, George W. Bush acknowledged being arrested for drunken driving 24 years earlier. In 2013, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) pleaded guilty to drunken driving after an arrest late the previous year in Alexandria, Va. He told the officer who pulled him over that he had consumed “several shots of vodka,” according to court records.