Walz, Tim

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      Is It Harris’ or Harris’s? Add a Walz, and It’s Even Trickier.

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      With Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz running on the same ticket, grammar geeks are in overdrive.When Vice President Kamala Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, she put to rest weeks of speculation over the future of the Democratic ticket. But the battle over apostrophes was just getting started.Where were voters (and journalists) supposed to place the possessive squiggle?It all felt a bit, as some social media users described, like apostrophe hell: Would it be Ms. Harris’s and Mr. Walz’s or Ms. Harris’ and Mr. Walz’s? The Harrises and the Walzes? The Harrises’ family home and the Walzes’ family dog? It was enough to see double, made worse by the fact that stylebooks, large news organizations and grammar geeks were all split or contradicted one another.“Anyone who tells you there are universal rules to how to add an apostrophe ending in S is either wrong or lying,” Jeffrey Barg, a grammar columnist, said. “You can’t be wrong as long as you’re consistent.”The Associated Press Stylebook, widely considered to be the gold standard among news organizations, is clear on its rule for the possessive of singular proper names ending in S — only an apostrophe is needed (Harris’), though there are always exceptions. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all do the opposite, opting for ’s to mark a singular possessive and a simple apostrophe for plural possessive (Harrises’ and Walzes’).Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in America, splits the difference: For names ending in an S or Z sound, you can add ’s or just an apostrophe, though the dictionary says ’s is the more common choice.“People want to know what the rules are because they want to do this correctly,” said Mr. Barg, who was raised on The A.P. stylebook. But at the same time, “you can’t impose language from the top down — it’s a bottom-up thing,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a learning experience for us as a country.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris Rides Momentum to Arizona, for What Campaign Says Is Largest Rally Yet

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      Vice President Kamala Harris rolled into Arizona on Friday evening with the same political momentum that has infused her first swing across the country this week, drawing a crowd that her campaign estimated at more than 15,000 — her largest yet — in a Western state that not long ago appeared to be falling off the battleground map.Along with her newly minted running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris delivered a stump speech that is barely a week old, and yet familiar enough to an impassioned new following that some shouted her lines before she did.The rally was her fourth in four days with an arena-filling crowd that demonstrated the degree to which her candidacy replacing President Biden’s had remade the 2024 race.Mr. Walz relished the crowd that filed into the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., in 100-degree heat as he poked fun at Mr. Trump’s obsession with rally crowds.“It’s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything,” Mr. Walz said to knowing cheers.Despite her momentum, Ms. Harris faces an uphill battle in Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold that flipped to Mr. Biden in 2020 but, according to polling, had been drifting back to former President Donald J. Trump this year.To win, she will need to reunite the diverse coalition of voters who delivered the state four years ago, and she made an explicit appeal to one part of that group on Friday: Native American voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris Has a Big Campaign Launch — and Big Tests Ahead

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      Fresh challenges in the offing could determine how long the vice president’s honeymoon will last.If you are Vice President Kamala Harris, another Democrat or any other person who happens to want Harris to become president, the last two weeks and five days have probably felt like a dream.There is a tougher reality for Harris, though, belied by the euphoric haze.The contest between Harris and former President Donald Trump remains remarkably close, and she is tied with him in must-win states like Wisconsin and Michigan, according to The New York Times’s polling averages. Trump’s allies are sharpening their attacks. And in a candidacy measured in days not months, she has yet to face the scrutiny of an interview or release a detailed vision for her potential presidency.Every presidential campaign is a series of tests. Can you excite voters? Can you raise money? For Harris, the answer to both of those questions so far is yes. Her party coalesced around her instantly. She has smashed fund-raising records and held overflowing rallies, and she seems to be tugging key swing states her way.But as Harris wraps up a battleground campaign tour with her brand-new running mate this weekend and turns her attention toward the Democratic National Convention this month, fresh challenges are in the offing. And the short campaign leaves a candidate who is still introducing herself to voters with little time for do-overs.“She will be tested,” Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said. “She’ll be tested by the Trump campaign. She’ll be tested by the press, and just by everyday events.”That may be why Harris has been careful to sound a note of caution to supporters who might prefer to luxuriate in the optimism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Walz and the Weird Politics of Free School Lunches

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      You could say that Tim Walz became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee with one weird trick — that is, by using that word to describe Donald Trump and JD Vance, a categorization that went viral. In his maiden campaign speech he upgraded it a bit further to “creepy and weird as hell.” (If you think that’s over the top, have you seen Trump’s bizarre rant speculating about whether Joe Biden is going to seize back his party’s presidential nomination?)But Walz is more than a meme-maker. He has also been an activist governor of Minnesota with a strong progressive agenda. And I’d like to focus on one key element of that agenda: requiring that public and charter schools provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students.Perhaps not incidentally, child care has long been a signature issue for Kamala Harris, and Walz’s policies may have played a role in his selection as her running mate.In any case, free school meals are a big deal in pure policy terms. They have also met fierce Republican opposition. And the partisan divide over feeding students tells you a lot about the difference between the parties, and why you really, really shouldn’t describe the MAGA movement as “populist.”Now, even many conservatives generally support, or at least claim to support, the idea of cheap or free lunches for poor schoolchildren. The National School Lunch Program goes all the way back to 1946, when it passed with bipartisan support and President Harry Truman signed it into law.Why should the government help feed kids? Part of the answer is social justice: Children don’t choose to be born into families that can’t or won’t feed them adequately, and it seems unfair that they should suffer. Part of the answer is pragmatic: Children who don’t receive adequate nutrition will grow up to be less healthy and less productive adults than those who do, hurting society as a whole. So spending on child nutrition is arguably as much an investment in the future as building roads and bridges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Walz’s Rise in the Democratic Party Was No Accident

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      More than a year ago, Tim Walz and his aides decided to be ready in case an irresistible opportunity arose. Their tightly held strategy helped them catch political lightning in a bottle.Shortly after the 2022 midterms, the political map seemed set: President Biden would be the Democratic nominee in 2024, with Vice President Kamala Harris by his side.But up in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz had just led his party to sweeping victories and wondered about the possibility of a different future — one where his Midwestern brand might be needed for a national role, perhaps even on a presidential ticket.So the plain-spoken Mr. Walz and his aides crafted a strategy to inject him into the national political conversation, according to a person involved in the discussions who insisted on anonymity to reveal Mr. Walz’s thinking. They would build his profile, one state party dinner and cable news appearance at a time. And few Democratic politicians, officials or members of the party faithful would see them coming because they would do it in a way that was, above all, Minnesota Nice.Their plan exploded into the public consciousness over a turbulent two weeks. Mr. Walz transformed from a little-known governor of a blue state to one of his party’s most prominent and powerful messengers. His approach, combined with a heavy dose of luck, helped him win the coveted vice-presidential nomination over rising stars from battleground states and liberal favorites.Mr. Walz achieved what his team had worked for 18 months to accomplish: He went viral. As his standing rose, he remained unfailingly loyal, humble and optimistic about the future in his interviews behind closed doors with Ms. Harris and her team.But underneath that veneer of Midwestern politeness, Mr. Walz had angled to improve his political prospects. In early 2023, his political staff began a concerted effort to hone his message and shine a light on his accomplishments. Aides pitched him relentlessly to podcasters, reporters, donors and activists. That summer, his team branded his progressive legislation “the Minnesota Miracle.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Harris Campaign Bets on Prairie Progressives

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      The Minnesota governor was not just in Wisconsin to sound folksy and talk about hunting.Sandee Kosmo was in her car today, inching along a backed-up county road on the way to Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally in Eau Claire, Wis., grinning about the prospect of seeing Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.“He’s so Midwest,” she gushed, after I asked to interview her as she crawled along. She praised his wry sense of humor. His hunting background. Even his ever-so-Midwestern faith.“I’m a Lutheran pastor,” Kosmo, 78, said. “And Walz is a Lutheran!”The Harris campaign chose Walz partly in the hope that he would connect with voters in critical states like Wisconsin. And the crowd that gathered in Eau Claire today — at least 10,000 people on event grounds surrounded by cornfields — was eager to claim him as its own.“Kamala made a good pick,” Wisconsin’s secretary of state, Sarah Godlewski, told the cheering crowd, “not just because Tim understands our love for a good Friday fish fry, but he also embodies our shared beliefs.”Eau Claire is a deep blue college town, and it’s far from clear that the appeal of the governor from the other side of the St. Croix will translate beyond liberal bastions like this one and expand his ticket’s competitive terrain. But as I wound my way through the crowd today, it occurred to me that the Eau Claires of the world might be the main point.In recent years, Wisconsin Democrats have notched major victories by running up their numbers in strongholds like Madison, La Crosse and Milwaukee. That means Walz was here not simply to sound folksy, talk about hunting and reach out to rural voters. His purpose, electorally speaking, is to fire up Wisconsin progressives who wish their state was a just little more like his.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tech Investors Are the Latest to Zoom for Harris

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      There was a Zoom call for cat ladies. Ones for Deadheads, Black women, white women, and then, of course, for the white dudes.And now, at long last, there was one for the venture capitalists.The latest affinity group to organize behind Kamala Harris on Wednesday represented the lowly millionaire and billionaire investors of Silicon Valley. Relative to the massive Zoom telethons that other groups had been hosting for Ms. Harris over the last two weeks, the “VCs for Kamala” call was a small group of around 600 people. But they represented some of the country’s most notable donors who have outsize influence in technology and Democratic politics.A week after publishing an open letter in support of Kamala Harris signed by more than 700 influential tech investors, a group of key backers took to Zoom to rally their peers in a way only they could: with PowerPoint presentations, startup aphorisms and a desire to make the Harris funding round “oversubscribed.” Their logo? Designed by AI, naturally.Ms. Harris, who grew up in Bay Area politics and has stronger personal relationships with tech executives and investors than did President Biden, has ushered in an enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket not seen in years. She is set to return to San Francisco for a fund-raiser this weekend, and the event is already sold out at all but the most expensive price points..On the call, Reid Hoffman, a major donor to President Biden and Ms. Harris, made the business case for supporting Ms. Harris over former President Donald J. Trump. “No chaos” was far better for business, he said. Other chief executives of major companies he has spoken to agreed, he added.Ron Conway, a billionaire investor and Silicon Valley Democratic leader, pledged on the call to match $50,000 in donations to the Harris effort. In total, the group received pledges of roughly $135,000 for the Harris campaign.John Corrigan, an organizer of the call, encouraged listeners to call their relatives in swing states and talk about politicsMr. Corrigan promised the group would reconvene in September: “After Burning Man.” More

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      Trump Criticizes Harris and Walz in Fox News Appearance and Suggests a Debate Will Happen

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      In an appearance on Fox News early Wednesday morning, former President Donald J. Trump called the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota “communist” and suggested he was willing to debate Ms. Harris anywhere, despite having pulled out of a scheduled debate.He also hit at Mr. Walz over an interaction they had in April 2020, one which at the time led to the then president tweeting: “Received a very nice call from @GovTimWalz of Minnesota. We are working closely on getting him all he needs, and fast. Good things happening!”He described Mr. Walz as calling him for help because he was scared of protesters outside his home, though reporting at the time described Mr. Walz asking Mr. Trump to help Minnesota get more personal protective equipment and increase its Covid testing capacity so that he could let businesses reopen in the early days of the pandemic.Representatives for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Claire Lancaster, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walz, said the subject of that call was P.P.E. and testing capacity, not the protests.Beyond his claims about the 2020 interaction with Mr. Walz, Mr. Trump stuck mainly to the arguments that other Republicans have advanced since Ms. Harris announced her running mate on Tuesday: that Mr. Walz is too liberal and that Ms. Harris rejected Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania because he is Jewish.In the interview, on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump repeated an attack that he has made many times before and that has been criticized as antisemitic, saying any Jewish person who voted for Democrats “should have their head examined.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More