After low profile, Bill Clinton steps back on stage as surrogate for Harris
DURHAM, N.C. — Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for the first time alongside the Democratic ticket Thursday, appearing with Gov. Tim Walz and reprising his role as “explainer in chief” to make the case to North Carolinians to elect Kamala Harris on the first day of early voting here.
“I don’t know how many more elections I’ll be involved with. And I’m too old to gild the lily. Heck, I’m only two months younger than Donald Trump. But, good news for you is I will not spend 30 minutes swaying back and forth for you,’ Clinton told cheering supporters in a gymnasium at a community recreation center. “I will not clap off beat. Nor will I pretend to be a conductor, because we got a race to win. And we have to win it. I’ve been doing this a long, long time, and I can honestly say that this time I am not here running for anything anymore except for my grandchildren’s future.’
Clinton appeared with Walz as part of a multi-state tour by the former president targeted at mobilizing rural and Black voters. Democrats are spending the final weeks of the race looking to blunt the GOP’s dominance with rural voters and shore up their own advantage with Black voters as polls show Trump has made slight — but meaningful — gains with them. Walz also has been on a multi-day campaign swing through rural parts of the swing states, touting his own background and connection to places where Democrats have ceded political ground to Republicans over the years.
“When I volunteered to help Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I told them, I said, ‘Send somebody else to the big places, somebody that needs the TV coverage,’ ‘ Clinton said Sunday at a Harris campaign office in Albany, Ga. “I said, ‘Send me to the country. I know where I belong.’ ”
Walz introduced Clinton Thursday as “a son of the South,” noting Clinton’s upbringing in Arkansas. While Walz delivered his stump speech, Clinton watched seated on stage — at times with his chin in his hands, at times leaning back in a grin as Walz criticized Trump.
“I could have sat here for another hour listen to him talk because he reminds me of home,” Clinton said of the Minnesota governor.
Wesley Harris (D), a North Carolina state representative running for state treasurer, said Clinton was the “perfect messenger to be able to go into these parts.” While Biden-Harris policies have improved the economy on the “macro level,” Harris said, some rural voters still feel left behind.
“They just want someone to understand what they’re going through,’ Harris said, calling it the party’s “biggest disconnect’ as it reaches out beyond the big cities. ‘I think the biggest economic message we need is empathy.”
Clinton dedicated much of his remarks to acknowledging concerns voters have about the economy, and explaining the conditions that led to the current rate of inflation. Democrats have long valued Clinton for his ability to speak about economic issues with simplicity and compassion. Former president Barack Obama memorably deemed Clinton the “explainer in chief.’
“It’s unfair to pretend that we could have been the only country in the world that would have escaped this inflation problem, and [Harris is] actually trying to do something about it,” he noted, directly addressing one of Democrats’ top vulnerabilities with voters.
He touted his credentials (“I know a little something about this. I did have that job for eight years”) and acknowledged inflation is a problem for Democrats (“Why aren’t we voting for the Democrats? A lot of people say, well, there’s been too much inflation. That’s right’), before walking supporters through what he described as the contributing factors.
He ticked through covid’s impact on the supply chain, the basics of supply and demand, and Biden and Harris’s work to lower inflation, drawing applause when he said the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates. “There’s still some residual inflation that we all have questions about, especially in food prices and fuel prices,” he acknowledged.
Attendees expressed optimism that Clinton will be able to reach rural voters in their state in part due to his economic messaging.
“He was a wonderful president, and I think he’s also someone who brings the south vote out being a Southerner himself,” said Helen Wolstenholme, 64, from Cary, N.C. “I think in eastern North Carolina that’s particularly important.”
“He connects well to rural communities,’ added her son, Xan Wolstenholme-Britt, 24, a student at Duke Law School. ‘He speaks normally and people, people connect with him that way, so I think he’s a good surrogate to have to send into rural communities like they’re doing.”
Walz has also leaned into his rural background since joining the ticket. Speaking at a soybean farm in Volant, Penn., on Tuesday, he rolled out his and Harris’s plan for rural communities and touted his childhood in rural Nebraska, background as a hunter, and experience working on the farm bill as a member of Congress representing a rural district.
“I promise you this, Vice President Harris and I, when we win this election, we will have rural Americans back just like they’ve had our back,” Walz said to cheers, clad in a camo baseball cap and red and black plaid flannel.
Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August but has otherwise kept a low profile in the campaign until recently. Democrats have contemplated how much to embrace him as a campaign surrogate following the #MeToo movement that started in 2017, casting a harsher light on the sexual misconduct allegations that he faced at the height of his political career.
He was largely welcomed warmly by the crowd Thursday, but some younger attendees expressed skepticism about his return to the trail.
“I’m not excited about him,” said attendee Rebecca May, 27, who is planning to vote for Harris but said she preferred her more progressive campaign positions in 2020.
“I think that they need the younger vote to win this election. I think young people care about things like Monica Lewinsky, about the #MeToo movement, I think people — young people — don’t care for Bill Clinton,” May added.
Clinton campaigned for Harris on Sunday and Monday in Georgia, a battleground state with particular importance to the former president. He was the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state — in 1992 — before Biden flipped it four years ago.
In Georgia, Clinton focused on retail campaigning over large-scale events. He visited churches, McDonald’s and a fish fry, sporting a camouflage Harris-Walz baseball cap.
Among the smaller cities that Clinton visited was Albany in southwestern Georgia, a predominantly Black community in a heavily Democratic county. It was also a key site in the civil rights movement, giving birth to the Albany Movement against desegregation across the region in 1961.
Rep. Sanford Bishop, a Democrat who represents southwest Georgia, said Clinton’s visit was “very, very effective,’ proving Harris’s commitment to rural America and especially resonating with older voters who remember his presidency.
“[Clinton] struck gold with people who were listening and who have those nostalgic favorable feelings for Clinton and for the Clinton legacy,” Bishop said.
Clinton will also visit more politically divided territory. He is set to attend a get-out-the-vote event Sunday with Democrats in Nash County, N.C., which Biden won by just 120 votes four years ago.
Early voting began in North Carolina on Thursday and by mid-afternoon, with 81 of the 100 counties reporting, 209,644 ballots had been cast, according to data released by the state board of elections. With hours left to vote, the state blew past previous year totals for the first day of early voting other than the 2020 presidential election when 348, 599 voted on the first day.
The state is expected to release the day’s final tally on Friday morning. Voting persisted despite the widespread destruction from Hurricane Helene last month. Across the 25 counties declared federal disaster areas, the state was able to open 76 polling places, just four less than the 80 they’d planned to have.
Colby Itkowitz contributed to this report.