Spotlight shifts to Vance, Walz with this week's vice presidential debate

WASHINGTON — Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz will face off Tuesday in a vice presidential debate that may be the last time voters can hear both campaigns make their cases side-by-side.

Vance, an Ohio senator running alongside former President Donald Trump, and Walz, the Minnesota governor who is Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, will square off for 90 minutes on a Manhattan debate stage with no audience.

The 9 p.m. debate, hosted by CBS News, comes as the candidates look to seal up support for their campaigns in the final five weeks of the race, and as polls show Harris gaining ground against Trump but still mostly running within the polling margin of error.

While vice presidential debates historically garner less attention than the presidential matchups, political analysts expect more voters to tune in this year, because Harris and Trump currently do not plan any more debates beyond their first one on Sept. 10.

"Normally, there is either one or two additional presidential debates in October with a much closer proximity to the election. And so in some ways, this is it. These will be kind of the closing statements for the two campaigns," said Aaron Kall, director of the University of Michigan’s debate program, and the editor of the book "Debating the Donald" about Trump’s performance in the 2016 debates.

Potential impact

Vice presidential debates historically have not moved the needle much, but Tuesday’s debate could still help both campaigns generate short-term buzz that energizes their respective campaigns, said Christopher J. Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton and co-author of the book "Do Running Mates Matter?: The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections."

"The [vice presidential] debates get a lot of eyeballs, they tear up a lot of headlines and you might get some viral moments," Devine told Newsday, recalling the online memes generated when a fly landed on then-Vice President Mike Pence’s face during his debate with Harris in 2020.

Dan Schnur, who served as communications director for Republican John McCain's 2000 presidential primary campaign, said "vice presidential debates usually don't matter all that much because running mates usually don't matter all that much."

But he conceded Tuesday’s debate could make a difference. "There are a couple reasons why this one might be more impactful than most," Schnur said. "If most Trump supporters won't say it out loud, they may know that the last presidential debate didn't go all that well for him. 

"So just as Joe Biden had to rally the troops after Barack Obama's first debate in 2012, a strong performance by Vance could be much more helpful to the Trump campaign than is normally the case," he said.

Schnur said Walz will play an important role in reaching "rural and small-town voters in swing states, those voters who might still not know much about Harris or they might not be all that motivated by her.

"Walz can fill in some of those blanks and potentially bring back some of those working-class Biden voters," he said.

With the debates coming as early voting is ramping up in some states, the vice presidential debate could help sway undecided voters who generally don’t tune in to the campaigns until closer to the election, said Kall, with the University of Michigan.

"With just about 40 days left until the election, there are so few events that can get so many people to kind of drop what they're doing and tune in, especially if they’re undecided," Kall said. "We know that undecided voters do tune in to these things now that we're past Labor Day, and they kind of start paying attention as Election Day gets closer."

Former Long Island Congressman Steve Israel, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015 and now serves as director of the nonpartisan Cornell University Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, said "the debate may not change many minds because most viewers already have partisan leanings."

But Israel noted that "for the remaining undecided voters in battleground states who tune in, the debate needs to demonstrate which candidate is more authentic, relatable and, most vital, can step into the role of president in a national emergency."

What to expect

Both Harris and Trump are counting on their running mates to "challenge the credentials of the other," before a national audience, said Robert Rowland, a communications studies professor at the University of Kansas who focuses on presidential rhetoric.

"Vance is fulfilling a role often played by vice presidential candidates — attack dog carrying the nationalist populist message of Donald Trump," Rowland told Newsday. "Walz has been perhaps the most effective spokesperson for the message of the Kamala Harris campaign" by characterizing Trump, Vance and their allies as "weird."

Vance and Walz each enter the debate with vulnerabilities that likely will be the source of questions and attack lines.

Vance has doubled-down on spreading baseless allegations that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets, even as officials there repeatedly have said the claims are unsubstantiated. He also has faced scrutiny for comments he has made about women without children, describing them as "childless cat ladies."

Walz has faced questions about the circumstances of his 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving, and whether his 2006 congressional campaign accurately described the arrest. He also has come under scrutiny by Vance for the timing of his 2005 retirement from the U.S. National Guard after 24 years of service. Walz has said he retired to run for Congress, but Vance has alleged that Walz left just before his Minnesota unit was deployed to Iraq.

Both men are "effective communicators, and persuasive and above-average debaters," said Kall, noting that Vance is a frequent guest on political talk shows and Sunday morning political shows, responding to "adversarial interviewers." Kall said Walz has a "real kind of relatable folksy language that people seem to be identifying with."

To have a strong night, Vance needs to "both talk about himself, his accomplishments during his short time in the Senate and to present a future vision for the country," Kall said. 

Walz, he said, needs to make sure not to have any "major gaffes, or anything to kind of put the spotlight on him and reverse some of" the gains made by the Harris-Walz campaign over the past few weeks.

The mission on Tuesday, Kall said, is "do no damage."