LAST UPDATE | 1 Oct
THE REPUBLICAN AND Democratic vice presidential candidates are set to face off in a debate tonight that will likely showcase the gulf between JD Vance and Tim Walz both in terms of policy and personality.
The debate comes just under a month before the country goes to the polls on 5 November. It may well be the last debate of the campaign.
Vance is a relative newcomer to US electoral politics. The 40-year-old venture capitalist and author has been a senator for the state of Ohio since 2022. He became a darling of the US media when he published his memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, and publicly criticised Donald Trump, comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
Vance now appears to have become Trump’s protegé and has even been allowed to steal some of the spotlight during the campaign.
Vance’s opponent is 20 years his senior and has been the governor of Minnesota since 2019. Before that, Tim Walz was a member of the House of Representatives from 2007. Despite his long career in politics, Walz was relatively unknown to the wider public before he became Harris’ running mate.
It is not just age and experience that separates the two prospective vice presidents though.
The debate is on at 2am Irish time at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City and will be moderated by CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan.
The debate is slated to last 90 minutes.
Vance has found himself on the defensive at times during the campaign as previous comments have come back to haunt him. Remarks he made in 2021 about prominent figures in the Democratic Party being “childless cat ladies” have come up time and again since he became Trump’s running mate.
Walz has had an easier ride since he got the nod from Kamala Harris – a move that surprised many commentators across the Atlantic.
He has received glowing media coverage in the US for his “folksy charm” while Vance has shown a penchant for pushing talking points that have made the Trump-Vance campaign appear “too online” for some within the Republican Party.
From pushing the false story that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets to calling Democrats “childless cat ladies”, Vance has been doing what Trump presumably brought him on board to do – push culture war issues.
Walz, on the other hand, has been sticking to the Democrat’s playbook of pushing the narrative that the party has been invigorated by the rise of Harris to the role of nominee after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race. All the while, both Harris and Walz have been steering clear of discussions of policy – a strategy that has led to criticism of their campaign.
It is in the area of policy though that Vance has drawn perhaps the most attention, particularly when he appeared to fly solo in announcing the campaign’s position on abortion – a total ban. After doing so, Trump came out and sought to correct the record without publicly admonishing Vance.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Vance told a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, while saying the moderators may be biased, “I know they were the first time”.
Vance has taken aim at the Democratic candidates’ lack of engagement with the media.
“The problem with Kamala Harris is she’s got no substance,” Vance said.
“Donald Trump was the candidate of peace,” said Vance, while criticising the Democrat’s full-fledged support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Vance attacked the Biden-Harris administration’s economic policies, pointing to the cost of living and inflation in particular.
Walz has been quieter in the run-up to the debate, but he will likely lean into his comments about the Republican Party candidate that garnered him plenty of attention not long after he was picked as Harris’ running mate, when he called his opponents “weird”.
He has reportedly been suffering from pre-debate nerves and those around him appear to being trying to lower expectations.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar told CNN: “He’s just not a lawyer-debater type. It’s not like he was dreaming of debates when he was in first grade.”
According to US pollsters 538, 45.7% of voters have an unfavourable opinion of JD Vance while 34.7% view him favourably.
In contrast, 40.1% of voters have a favourable opinion of Tim Walz while 36.4% have an unfavourable opinion of the former National Guard member.
As far as the presidential candidates are concerned, the race remains tight at the national level – Harris is slightly ahead of Trump with 49% support compared to 46% – but in key battleground states, like Michigan and Pennsylvania, the two are basically neck and neck.
The 90-minute debate will be broken up by two ad breaks and campaign staff are not allowed to interact with the candidates during those breaks.
As was the case in the Trump-Harris debate a few weeks ago, there will be no audience in the studio.
But unlike the presidential debate, the two candidates’ microphones will not be muted in between answering questions. But according to CBS, the network “reserves the right to turn off the microphones”.
There will also be no opening statements, so the moderators will be diving straight into questions.
Walz and Vance, who cannot bring pre-written notes or props with them, will have two minutes to answer a question and two minutes to respond, with an additional minute for rebuttals. At the moderators’ discretion, candidates may get an additional minute to continue a discussion.
Vance won a virtual coin toss ahead of the debate and has chosen to give his closing remarks second. Each candidate will have two minutes to do so.
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