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(NEXSTAR) – The first two nights of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago put a spotlight on presidents and former first ladies who know what it takes to win and hold the White House. On Wednesday night, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will make the case that he's ready not only to win the 2024 race but help run the country when President Joe Biden's term comes to an end in January.
Walz and former President Bill Clinton will headline the DNC on Wednesday, the third day of the party's choreographed rollout of a new candidate, Kamala Harris, and her pitch to voters.
Other Democratic stars who plan to address the convention tonight include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Cory Booker, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Harris is working to stitch together a broad coalition in her bid to defeat Republican former President Donald Trump this fall. She is drawing on stars like former President Barack Obama and his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, and other celebrities, officials from the far left to the middle, and even some Republicans to boost her campaign.
Political scientists say VP picks rarely swing an election, but Democrats hope Walz, who is known for his reliability to working-class voters, could be a key figure in shoring up support for Harris in key battleground states.
“So much is on the line in this election,” Harris said Tuesday in Milwaukee, where she spoke at a professional basketball arena in battleground Wisconsin as the convention continued 90 miles away in Chicago. “And understand, this not 2016 or 2020. The stakes are higher.”
Walz's job when he accepts the nomination is to introduce himself to Americans who had never heard of him until Harris plucked him from relative obscurity to join her ticket. His goofy, folksy, Midwestern dad aura has endeared him to Democrats and balanced Harris' coastal background.
Before welcoming the vice presidential nominee onto the stage Wednesday night, R&B singer John Legend is expected to perform a medley of songs by the late icon and Minnesota native Prince, according to reports from Rolling Stone and the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Convention organizers dubbed the theme for Wednesday “a fight for our freedoms," a nod to the concept around which Harris has organized her campaign. She frames Trump as a threat to abortion rights and personal choices, but also to democracy itself.
In the intense scrutiny that comes with a presidential campaign, Walz has faced repeated questions about embellishing his background. His wife, Gwen Walz, this week clarified that she did not undergo in vitro fertilization but used other fertility treatments after Republicans pointed to multiple times her husband talked publicly about his family's reliance on IVF. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, called Tim Walz a liar.
Republicans have also pointed to a 2018 comment in which Walz refers to weapons “that I carried in war” while talking about gun violence. Though he served in the National Guard for 24 years, Walz did not deploy to a war zone.
Clinton, meanwhile, is a veteran of the political convention speech — and famously longwinded. He bored the audience with his keynote address at the 1988 Democratic convention, when he was the young, little-known governor of Arkansas. It damaged his reputation, but he recovered and when he next spoke at a convention four years later it was to accept the Democratic nomination.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
