“I can’t wait to see the coach,” Frances Kaupp, a retiree said as Democratic Party supporters lined up several hours before Minnesota Governor and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz took the stage at the Grand Sierra Resort on Tuesday night.
Supporters often refer to Walz as “coach” as he was a high school teacher who coached football before becoming a congressman in 2007 and a governor in 2019.
Vice President Kamala Harris selected him as her running mate in August, bypassing more conventional choices.
“Women’s rights are the most important subject for me, and it’s not just reproductive rights because I see the backward motion of what’s happening now, and I’m wondering what rich white men are going to take away from women,” Kaupp said, explaining her support for the Harris-Walz ticket.
Their opponent former Republican President Donald Trump appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, which in 1973 had established the constitutional right to an abortion.
Despite voting since 1964, this is the first election Kaupp says she has put a political sign in her yard to show her support and beliefs.
“I would love to see an administration that is respectful, that respects the people who live in this country and respects other people as well,” said Debbie Dahlstrom, another attendee. “I want to vote for somebody that we can respect because we know that the other person has no respect for anybody.”
As an avid reader, Dahlstrom found that this political cycle drew parallels to Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here. The novel chronicles a demagogue’s election to the presidency on a patriotic platform. Once elected, the president takes over the government and implements his totalitarian rule. Fearing this scenario, Dahlstrom bought copies for her friends and extras to distribute to others.
Mother and daughter Janet Swanton and Heather Dodd attended Walz’ rally armed with red, white, and blue friendship bracelets and cat ears to pass out to fellow attendees–a play on what Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance previously said about Harris, calling her “one of the childless cat ladies” who “want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
Dodd’s decision to vote for Harris was heavily impacted as well by the candidates positions on reproductive rights and the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022, now giving states the ability to ban abortions.
“We’re absolutely done. Everything that I grew up with is being stripped away from my daughter,” Dodd said.
“Nothing was going to change my mind, you know, because the opposite is so horrible,” Dodd explains. “He was really good. He covered all the points, he was good and he was concise,” Swanton says on Walz’ performance at the Tuesday night rally, which also touched on expanding health care and affordable housing.
Local Washoe County teacher Christine Hanzlik-Wilcox attended the rally with her husband and two children.
“I’m a teacher, and I have children who need to have a world left for them that is not full of hate,” Hanzlik-Wilcox said on her decision to vote for Harris and Walz.
“He is so much fun to listen to,” Hanzlik-Wilcox said of Walz. “We loved his advocacy for LGBT rights and disability rights that I really appreciate, as well as women’s rights.”
“The continuation of democracy,” said Teresa Love, a flight attendant who was present last night, when asked about what issue is the most important to her.
Washoe County is considered a swing county in Nevada, one of the states where the polls have been the tightest in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 5.