Harris heads out on blitz through US swing states

EAU CLAIRE, United States: Kamala Harris took her breakneck presidential campaign on a tour of US election battlegrounds on Wednesday as she seeks to woo a coalition of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to power her to the White House.

The 59-year-old vice president has been riding a wave of excitement and an upward swing in polling in the two weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic standard-bearer to take on Republican Donald Trump on November 5.

Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will take their campaign to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before traveling to Detroit, Michigan, for a rally with members of the United Auto Workers union.

Just hours after Walz was announced on Tuesday, the pair held the biggest Democratic event of the election so far in front of a raucous crowd of around 10,000 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.

“We are the underdogs in this race, but we have the momentum and I know exactly what we are up against,” Harris told the crowd in Philadelphia.

Walz, a 60-year-old former Army National Guard officer, has been governor of staunchly Democratic Minnesota since 2019 but before that had a record as a US congressman of winning over moderate and independent voters. Seen initially as an outsider for the VP pick, Walz enjoyed viral success in distilling Democrats´ attack lines against Republicans into a relatable one-word characterization -- “weird” -- that propelled him up Harris´s shortlist.