With flannel, football and pheasants, Harris and Walz play in Trump territory

You can expect to see more of Tim Walz this fall — in orange. Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, wears a bright vest and carries a rifle during a pheasant hunt. Then he won’t be wearing sticky flannels, talking about cleaning his gutters, or singing, “Save big at Menards.”

The EveryDad image, complete with his nickname “Coach Walz,” is an unmistakable signal aimed at reaching white, working-class and rural voters, the kind of voters Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz are trying to woo as they wait to fight to the finish line in battleground states where narrowing losing margins in red counties could lift overpower them.

Democrats say they have been ceding rural areas and even some suburban areas to former President Donald Trump for years. Rural areas of states like Wisconsin and Nevada turned into deep red Trump districts and have been nearly impenetrable to the left since 2016.

Harris campaign officials believe they have a chance with white moderate and blue-collar voters — among whom Harris may have a softer appeal — by highlighting Walz’s Midwestern roots, military background, ties to the workforce, experience as a hunter and career as a football coach.

Harris, too, has sent a signal to those voters, relying on her work as a prosecutor and her self-made biography as the daughter of immigrants who worked at McDonald’s and then rose through the ranks to become vice president.

All in all, it’s a playbook, unlike Barack Obama’s in 2008, when he picked Joe Biden as his running mate. Then, early in his political career, Obama tapped a Washington veteran with foreign policy expertise to appeal to working-class and white working-class voters.

Some bigwigs on Obama’s team are helping to run Harris’s campaign, including David Plouffe, who is a senior adviser on strategy; Stephanie Cutter, senior communications advisor; and Jen O’Malley Dillon, campaign chair.

The strategy was also used in 2020, but Biden and Harris switched roles. As the vice presidential candidate, Harris was meant to help drum up interest among women and voters of color, while Biden touted ties to labor and his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

John Anzalone, chief staff for both the Obama campaigns and Biden’s 2020 election, is advising the Harris-Walz campaign. He said every presidential political strategist should remember that just a 44,000-vote advantage in battleground states put Biden ahead in 2020. Anzalone added that aggressive third-party spending in rural areas might just make the difference.

“You can’t just do basic policy. You have to broaden the base and narrow margins in demographics that are rougher for you,” he said. “You might kick your ass, but it’s about getting your ass kicked by a smaller margin.”

Once there, the Biden campaign months ago began work in those areas, taking root in rural counties in battleground states to reach potential voters they say have been ignored by Democrats for years.

“For many cycles, Democrats didn’t understand the value of showing up in places that might be a little harder to win because they were less effective,” said Dan Kanninen, the Harris-Walz campaign’s battleground director. “It was more effective to go to the big city market, maybe focus on the suburbs, but less effective to go to rural America because all the voices weren’t in one place.”

Kanninen said that as the trend continues from cycle to cycle, “it’s like you lose people completely.” Democrats suffered staggering 80-20 percent losses in red counties, he said.

The campaign started to combat that early by setting up offices and headquarters in those communities, talking to voters and organizing events, including replacement bus trips to more rural areas, Kanninen said. Voters started showing up, he added, saying people “maybe needed an invitation, needed a place to go.”

Now the campaign highlights the Harris-Walz flag in these areas. Some of the themes highlighted at the Democratic National Convention also moved toward that goal, bringing Walz’s football team to the convention stage and prompting patriotic chants of “USA!” and included Democratic elected officials who were military veterans.

“It’s something you can do to attract a new type of voter who hasn’t been in the Democratic Party,” said a source close to the campaign. “You see things like: Who is better at shooting a pheasant – Walz or [JD] Vance? We’re going to keep them balanced.”

The campaign offers an opportunity to reclaim images associated with Republicans, including hunting, football and old-fashioned patriotism.

Walz is also widely expected to share a biography that drew a standing ovation at the convention when he spoke about the 40-year-old with young kids with no political experience running for office in a deep-red district.

“But you know what? Never underestimate a public school teacher,” he said as the crowd roared.

One of the couple’s first rallies was in rural Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where 12,000 people showed up. Walz may have another advantage in rural Wisconsin. According to the campaign, more than 600,000 predominantly rural Wisconsinites live in Minnesota media markets or in counties across Minnesota. This means that these areas are much more familiar with Walz.

In Nevada, since Biden endorsed Harris on July 21, more than 3,000 new volunteers have signed up from rural areas alone.

The campaign also plans to lean on governance issues, officials said, including emphasizing that recent infrastructure funding is aimed at bringing high-speed internet to rural areas and promoting Medicaid expansion, which has been popular in rural North Carolina, for example. The state, which hasn’t been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008, has already opened offices in rural communities in six counties.

In Wisconsin, the Harris campaign has a presence in red counties where Democrats have not previously opened offices.

Rural means different things in different countries. Rural counties in North Carolina and Georgia are more diverse, while rural counties in Wisconsin and Nevada, for example, are predominantly white. Harris’ campaign highlights the administration’s contributions to Georgia, including new clean energy jobs, rural health care and significant investments in Georgia farmers.

Speaking to reporters in Chicago last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said rural districts could also help decide the Senate and, by extension, the next president’s legislative agenda.

“We’re not going to win rural districts, but we’re going to reduce the margin by which Republicans can win them,” Schumer said.

Meanwhile, Republicans painted Democrats as disengaged from voters worried about border security, gas prices, rising auto insurance rates in places like Nevada and the cost of groceries.

“These are kitchen table issues, and those kitchen table issues are coming home. And Kamala Harris has done nothing for us over the last three years,” said Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, a Trump adviser.

Meanwhile, McDonald pointed to the intensity of the race in the state, where early polls gave Trump a sizable lead over Biden. Harris’ entry into the presidential nomination has improved the number of Democrats.

“They are running a serious campaign – as are we,” he said.

Trump’s team says it is more confident than ever about the depth of its support in rural America. It casts Harris as a “dangerous liberal” and has painted Walz as a failed governor, in addition to accusing him of inflating his military background.

“Trump has hundreds of paid employees, more than 300 offices and tens of thousands of active volunteers across battleground states, and we are actively working to reach voters in rural, suburban and urban communities where President Trump is making historic victories and Democrats are being forced to defend,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

“If dangerous liberals Kamala Harris and Tim Walz think they’re scoring points in rural America, where hard-working families are being left behind by Kamala’s terrible VP policies, they should think again,” he added. Trump Country more than ever.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com