CBS News
Democrats hope Tim Walz brings boost in battleground congressional races
Nine days before Vice President Kamala Harris selected him to be her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz received a text message from a fellow Minnesota Democrat.
“I’ve never lost with you on top of the ballot,” Rep. Angie Craig wrote. In describing the text to CBS News, she added “LOL,” saying she’d teased him at the time about his status as a top contender for the job.
Craig, who represents the far southern suburbs of Minneapolis in one of the most competitive and moderate House districts in America, took an early stand against the leader of her own party. Soon after President Biden’s dismal debate performance, she called on him to drop out of the race.
After his departure, Craig championed Walz for VP.
“He can talk to anybody, anywhere, about anything,” she told CBS News. Craig said Walz is a political force in “so many swing states and battleground districts.”
Jim Vondruska / Getty Images
The governor’s first month as his party’s vice presidential nominee is raising optimism among Democrats about their prospects in two battleground House races where Walz has roots. In Minnesota’s 2nd District, Craig faces a stiff challenge as she pursues her fourth term.
And in Walz’s birthplace of Nebraska, where he campaigned in mid-August, Democrats are hoping his connections will help them oust veteran incumbent Republican Don Bacon. Both races are expensive, close and could have an outsized impact on the balance of power in the House, where Republicans are clinging to a very narrow majority heading into the November elections.
The Republicans trying to win those seats have aggressively criticized Walz, questioning the quality of his record as governor and doing their best to tie Democratic House candidates to GOP anti-Walz messages.
Craig says Walz has won her swing district handily when he’s been on the ballot as governor.
“He campaigns aggressively. He shows up anywhere,” she said. “I once went turkey hunting with him at the beginning of the season; then we were at a gay rights gala that same weekend. His range is truly extraordinary.”
Craig’s challenger, Republican Joe Teirab, is trying to appeal to the large number of voters in the 2nd District who have a history of splitting their tickets.
A former federal prosecutor, Teirab is going after Walz over his response to the 2020 unrest in Minneapolis in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
“Tim Walz has failure on his record,” Teirab told CBS News. “And I think people are going to be voting on that.” He argues that Walz has not shown enough support for law enforcement, and he believes that policing and public safety will be key issues in battleground races, including in Minnesota.
“People here know that we need to support law enforcement to uphold public safety,” Teirab said, adding that “after the 2020 riots, it was a lot harder for law enforcement departments to recruit and retain talent.”
Teirab brings up his own record as a prosecutor when he campaigns.
“I’ve had to throw a lot of drug traffickers behind bars,” he told CBS News. “I’d love to be part of the effort to stem that tide in Congress.”
Craig, however, has the backing of some in law enforcement and announced a series of endorsements by groups including the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association.
In Omaha, Nebraska, and its own 2nd Congressional District, another battleground race has included talk of a visit by Walz. The VP nominee, who grew up in small-town Nebraska, campaigned in the 2nd District on Aug. 17, underscoring the significance of Nebraska’s distinctive system of awarding presidential electors by congressional district.
Longtime Republican incumbent Don Bacon, who has a history of defeating both conservative Republican primary opponents and Democratic general election challengers, has accused Walz of shifting to the political left in the years since he won the governorship in Minnesota.
“I think his support in this district will dissipate,” Bacon told CBS News. “But we’ve got to be good at messaging it.”
Bacon said he would have been more concerned about his electoral prospects if Harris had instead selected Gov. Josh Shapiro, a first-term Pennsylvania Democrat, as her running mate.
“I think Shapiro was a much more threatening vice president than Walz,” Bacon said. “In the end, Walz’s roots or connections here may not be relevant enough. I think he was helpful up front, but I don’t think it’s going to be helpful in the long run.”
Bacon’s Democratic challenger, state legislator Tony Vargas, is hoping Walz can boost Democrats’ appeal to blue-collar voters in Nebraska. Vargas, likeWalz, is a former schoolteacher. He told CBS News, “Seeing Gov. Walz on the ticket is something that we’ve been talking about at my events. We need working-class people in Congress. Gov. Walz is incredibly supportive of organized labor.”
“We need examples of what working class individuals look like in Congress and at the top ticket of the presidency in the executive branch,” said Vargas.
During Walz’s campaign stop in Nebraska last month, Vargas said he talked with him about the chances of flipping the House from Republican to Democratic control.
Both parties are claiming to have the momentum in the races for the Minnesota and Nebraska House seats. The race for the two seats has attracted millions in campaign spending.
Craig said the switch at the top of the ticket has boosted Democratic candidates across several battleground states, but she still says her race will be a “tough fight” and a “hard push.”
In several battleground districts, including the 2nd District of Nebraska, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has touted fundraising success by challengers seeking to defeat incumbents.
Walz’s addition to the presidential ticket underscores the impact of the historic withdrawal of President Biden from the presidential race. The reconfigured ticket has provided Democrats with a blast of enthusiasm, more favorable polling, volunteers and donations.
Craig and Vargas told CBS News they’ve noticed a significant uptick in enthusiasm among prospective voters during door-knocking and campaign events.
Republicans say they expect the initial enthusiasm among Democrats to wane.
“President Trump and JD Vance have to be focused on the economy, border, crime, and they need to be pretty clear about what Harris and Walz have stood for in the past,” Bacon said. “And if they do that, I think we’ll be fine.”
contributed to this report.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
