Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are the two primary presidential candidates in the upcoming elections. Harris represents the Democratic Party, and Trump represents the Republican Party. However, they have each selected a vice president to run by their side and support them through their campaign and through election season as a whole.
These candidates are Tim Walz, running with Harris, and JD Vance, running with Trump. Each have been personally selected by their respective presidential candidate. The recent debate was a great highlight of their careers.
“Watching the VP debate was so interesting because there was a level of respect that I haven’t seen in politics for a little bit. Both candidates made good points and acknowledged the other’s perspective even if their views didn’t align,” is how Madi Rogers, a sophomore chemical engineering major, described the event.
The history behind the two candidates is also very important.
Walz is currently serving as the governor of Minnesota and was previously a representative for Minnesota for three terms. He was a representative of the state in the House of Representatives and worked towards passing legislation to move to the Senate and then the president. He worked among three committees in the house — agriculture, armed services, and veterans affairs — during his time as a representative.
Prior to his time as a part of Congress and Governor, he served as a member of the Army National Guard for 24 years before retiring as Command Sgt. Maj. This makes Walz the highest ranking enlisted soldier to work in Congress. He has a bachelor’s degree in social science earned from Chadron State College in Nebraska.
He has made improving veteran life one of his top priorities while serving in the government and has a strong work ethic because of his time spent in the military.
Vance currently serves as one of two senators representing the state of Ohio, and is running alongside Trump for this election.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2003, shortly after graduating from Middletown High School in Ohio. He fought for the country in the Iraq War during his time in the military. After returning from deployment he sought out a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009 from The Ohio State University. Later he went on to Yale Law School and earned his law degree in 2013.
He attributes a large part of his political career to his upbringing, in which his mother and father divorced, then his mother went on to deal with drug and alcohol use disorders. He was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents and wants to bring more awareness to communities like that which he was raised in.
He published a memoir titled “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” in 2016 which outlined communities in poverty and how poverty was a “family tradition” for many people.
Vance and Walz both strive to support their presidential candidates and bring awareness to the issues that they are campaigning for prior to the election this November.
One of Harris’ main goals for choosing a vice presidential candidate was to balance out her ticket. She is a Black and Indian woman who is the first to be representing a major party ticket, and her hope is that choosing a Midwestern man who is white will bring more citizens to vote for them. Further, Walz is a gun owner from a rural Republican-dominant town, which will show the country that there is more behind a political party than what some seem to understand.
Typically, the Democratic party is against gun ownership and use in the country, but by having a representative of this issue on her ticket, it could sway some votes their way.
The story behind Vance and Trump is drastically different. There was a time where Vance called himself a “never Trump guy,” but as time went on they began to share many of the same views and ideas on various issues in the United States, one of those being immigration laws. Vance began to echo the voice of Trump, who endorsed Vance during his election in 2019 for United States Senate, which went on to create their relationship and now will be running on the 2024 presidential ticket together.
“Vice presidential candidates are extremely important to research in addition to presidential candidates because they are a reflection of the president. They hold an important office, and their qualifications and past makes this research relevant,” Caroline Marcus, a sophomore public administration and economics major, said.
The vice president elect is just as important as the president elect when it comes to the federal government. Each has their own views and stands on their own side of politics when it comes to several different issues surrounding the government. Researching the president and vice president candidates is important when it comes to modern elections because not every issue is black and white, and each candidate has different views when it comes to these issues.
