Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz wrapped himself in football and freedom on Wednesday, as Democrats used the third night of their convention to offer an open hand to the swing voters outside the country's coasts.
Walz introduced himself to the nation as a teacher, coach and veteran with bipartisan credentials and a simple pledge to "respect our neighbors and the choices they make."
"Thank you for your passion. Thank you for your determination, and most of all, thank you for bringing the joy to this fight," Walz said at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
For Democrats, the evening was an opportunity to introduce Vice President Kamala Harris' newly-minted running mate and put Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on the defensive. The lineup of speakers taking the stage cast their party as happy warriors determined to defend abortion access, gay marriage, and voting rights.
The message was delivered with a healthy dose of down-home nostalgia, with Walz even introduced by a burly reunion of his former football players. Former President Bill Clinton urged attendees to talk to their neighbors and meet skeptics where they are, while Walz emphasized he would not be hostile to the Second Amendment.
The night featured many of the party's rising stars, who largely echoed Walz's tone and tenor: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg compared the nation's political climate to wrangling his three-year-old children to the dinner table, while Maryland Governor Wes Moore described the US as a gathering "of patriots who serve when the mission was hard."
The result was an evening lacking some of the emotional highs of the convention's first two nights, when President Joe Biden tearfully passed the torch to Harris and Barack and Michelle Obama delivered blistering condemnations of Trump.
On Wednesday, the criticism was more homespun. Clinton, in a speech delivered with his trademark asides, offered a folksy critique of Trump.
"We've got a pretty clear choice it seems to me. Kamala Harris, for the people. And the other guy who has proved, even more than the first go-around, that he's about me, myself and I," Clinton said.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Trump and the Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, were "creepy, but even worse, they're weak."
Highlighting some of Trump's key vulnerabilities was the guiding principle for convention organizers eager to exploit voter misgivings about the Republican nominee, but they also sought to shore up some of their own.
After largely sidelining the conflict in the Middle East during the first two nights of their convention, Democrats invited the family of a hostage taken in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel to the stage. Later, a Texas sheriff and Pete Aguilar, a California congressman, defended the party's approach to immigration policy.
"Immigrants pay taxes and love this country deeply "- the same people Donald Trump wants you to believe are poisoning the blood of our country," Aguilar said.
But beyond attacking Trump, Democrats also said they're eager to introduce Walz to a bigger audience.
"He has a folksy way about himself," Jim Clyburn, the longtime South Carolina congressman, said Wednesday at a convention event hosted by the Washington Post. "He knows how to just be himself. He doesn't try to be anything else or anybody else. He just does it," he added. "That is why he's on this ticket."
The race to define Walz has become particularly important as Republicans have seized on past misstatements by the Minnesota governor to paint him as a fabulist.
Walz's 2006 campaign for Congress made false statements about his arrest in 1995 for drunk driving, while the governor himself appears to have overstated elements of his military record.
Vance also accused Walz of lying about having conceived his children via in vitro fertilization, which has become a flashpoint in the campaign after the Alabama Supreme Court in February ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law.
Senate Republicans, including Vance, voted against a bill that would federalize protections for the fertility treatment. But despite some remarks suggesting his wife had undergone IVF, Walz's children were conceived via a different treatment called intrauterine insemination.
Trump himself is notoriously prone to exaggeration and embellishment, and polls show Vance is viewed unfavorably by a plurality of Americans, complicating Republican efforts to hit Walz on the issue. But around four in 10 Americans surveyed earlier this month by the Associated Press said they didn't know enough about Walz to have an opinion "" underscoring why both sides are working hard to define him.
Trump, for his part, suggested that Democratic attacks would backfire. He told supporters in North Carolina on Wednesday that he thought the convention was focused far more on him than issues like the economy or the border.
"They always say, 'Sir, please stick to policy, don't get personal,'" Trump said. "And yet they are getting personal all night long, these people."
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