By Andrea Shalal and Stephanie Kelly, Reuters
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz prepared for a high-profile speech at his party's convention on Wednesday, while independent candidate Robert F Kennedy appeared to be weighing an endorsement of Republican Donald Trump.
Walz, the running mate of presidential nominee Kamala Harris, has energised Democrats eager to defeat the former president in the Nov. 5 election.
The Minnesota governor, 60, will talk about growing up on a farm in Nebraska, his family, and freedoms that Democrats say are under attack from Trump, who is making his third major-party run for the White House.
Meanwhile, ABC News reported that Kennedy plans to abandon his bid and declare support for Trump, a development that could help the Republican pick up votes in an election that opinion polls show is likely to be close. Kennedy's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photo: AFP
Walz has brought a folksy charm to the campaign trail, describing himself and Harris as "joyful warriors" focused on a brighter future and accusing Republicans of stoking fear and division.
He will take the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago after former president Bill Clinton, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was instrumental in persuading President Joe Biden to drop his struggling reelection bid a month ago.
Opinion polls showed Biden trailing Trump before he ceded the party's top spot to Harris; polls now show her besting her Republican rival in several of the states that will decide the 5 November presidential election.
At the convention on Tuesday, Walz and Harris got an endorsement from former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.
"I love this guy," Obama said of Walz. "You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don't come from some consultant - they come from his closet, and they've been through some stuff."
Walz's rapid rise to national fame has drawn scrutiny.
Republicans say he was too slow to confront rioters after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020, though Trump praised the governor's response at the time.
Republicans have also accused Walz of exaggerating his rank in the Army National Guard, where he served for 24 years.
Walz has in the past described himself as a retired command sergeant major, one of the highest noncommissioned officer positions in the Army. While he achieved that rank, he did not meet the requirements to retire with that title. Walz retired to run for Congress in 2005 before his unit was sent to war in Iraq.
Harris campaign officials are betting Walz's Midwestern roots and plainspoken style will appeal to some of the white men in rural areas who voted for Trump by huge margins in the last two elections - and help deliver battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Walz will be introduced by Ben Ingman, a former student, and US Senator Amy Klobuchar, a fellow Minnesotan who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020.
Kennedy dropping out?
Kennedy, 70, declined to tell ABC News whether he would drop out of the race one day after his running mate Nicole Shanahan said that was a possibility. The anti-vaccination activist and son of the late Democratic politician Robert F Kennedy, started his campaign as a Democrat but failed to gain traction in the primary.
Larry Sharpe, an official with a political committee supporting Kennedy, told Reuters that fundraising has slowed after speculation he would drop out.
His support stood at 4 percent in an Ipsos poll earlier this month.
Mary Beth Cahill, a senior advisor at the Democratic National Committee, described Kennedy as a tool of Trump.
"Desperate men do desperate things," she said in a statement. "No should be shocked if he formalises his relationship in an attempt to maintain relevance."
Trump met with Kennedy last month to discuss a possible endorsement.
At a campaign stop in Asheboro, North Carolina, Trump said Democrats are going to "cheat like hell to win the election", building on previous comments that suggest he might try to contest the result if he loses, as he did in 2020.
At an event focused on national security, Trump said he would fire all senior military commanders who had been involved in the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"This house cleaning will be a signal to the entire world and the American military and everybody else," he said.
Many senior officers who were involved in that operation have already retired.