Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Abby Livingston.

Congress is recessed, but it was another head spinning day on the campaign trail. Earlier this afternoon, in a hostile interview with Rachel Scott, Kadia Goba, and Harris Faulkner at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, Donald Trump questioned the racial identity of his opponent, Kamala Harris, receiving audible boos from the audience. It was the latest weird development from Trump during a news cycle that has been full of them.

For tonight’s main event, Tara Palmeri has a fascinating conversation with Rep. Brendan Boyle, the five-term Philadelphia-area Democrat, who has a lot to say about Harris’s odds of winning the state (especially after reversing her position on fracking) and the merits of potentially selecting Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate.

But first, a few notes on another V.P. contender: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and why he was a favorite among Democrats during his six terms on Capitol Hill…

So why did he fly under the radar for so long? “He’s never a show-off,” said retired Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos. Walz was assigned as her mentor by leadership when she arrived on Capitol Hill in 2013. “He was very, very popular with other members,” she added. “Easy to work with. Great follow-through. Fun. Funny. A doer. Bipartisan. The complete package as a fellow member of Congress.” Bustos’ praise was reiterated by other former colleagues and Hill staffers. (As Tara points out below, Walz was also Brendan Boyle’s congressional football coach… Yes, it’s a thing.)

Walz, who first ran for Congress in 2006 amid the anti-Iraq and Bush-is-an-imbecile sentiment that brought Democrats and Nancy Pelosi to power, had a unique candidate profile: He was a high-school geography teacher whose students volunteered for his campaign. But unlike many of his classmates, Walz survived the Republicans’ 2010 Tea Party wave, in part, by overwhelming his opponents in fundraising. As Walz’s seat became safer, he shifted from a frontliner to a donor member, who gave to dozens of Democratic candidates and to the state D.F.L. party. Curiously, his long-term committee assignments were the type usually bestowed upon freshmen—he served on Agriculture (which fit his southern Minnesota district) and Veterans, which tracked with his military background. He ran for governor before ever making it to more exclusive committees like Appropriations and Energy and Commerce.

Instead, Walz concentrated on policies like the Farm Bill, one of the few pieces of legislation that has backing from both parties. “He believed in bipartisanship, like I do,” Bustos said. “He understood rural politics and governing, like I learned to do. He was a great fit for me. He was always helpful to me, and I consider him a friend. We keep in touch to this day.”

Now for Tara’s tête-à-tête with Rep. Brendan Boyle…

Congressman Brendan Boyle: I’m playing the very long game. I look at 2060 as when I’ll start to peak, when I’ll be the age that Trump and President Biden are now.

Let’s talk about your state. Polling has Trump ahead by two to three points in Pennsylvania. You said on my podcast a few months ago that this race will come down to half a percentage point in the state. Would you make that same prediction right now?

Yeah, I would. Look, I go back to the fundamentals. In 2016, the margin of victory for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton was about a half a percentage point. In 2020, it was just over one percentage point for Biden. I can’t imagine either candidate winning Pennsylvania by much north of one percentage point. We are just so structurally close as a state that I do again believe that we will have a very close election here.

Why is Trump so popular in Pennsylvania? What makes him so strong compared to other Republican candidates in the past that haven’t been able to win your state?

So I would disagree with the premise, actually. I think if Republicans nominated almost anyone else, they would’ve had a better chance of winning. Certainly if they had nominated Nikki Haley, they would have a better chance of winning. In 2016, when Trump was new and was fresh, he was able—to his credit—to bring out people who had never participated in politics, who were kind of disaffected and weren’t typical voters. That was part of why the pollsters missed them. They had no history of turning out before.

A lot of that, though, has really dropped off for Donald Trump. By 2020, even really since the 2018 midterm, those voters were gone. Since then, Democrats have made historic inroads in suburban Philadelphia—places like Chester County, which were Republican from the Civil War up until 2016. Now it’s not even competitive. We’re winning there by double digits and up and down the ticket, not just the presidential race, but all the way to the state legislature, and that’s not a place that has seen racial or ethnic demographic change. It’s all from traditionally Republican voting folks who now vote Democratic. Donald Trump is a historically unpopular presidential nominee.

Okay, but does Chester County vote for a Black woman at the top of the ticket?

I would be inclined to say yes. I think there’s more of a question, not in a place like Chester County, Pennsylvania, but in some of the more blue-collar pockets of the state, from the Lehigh Valley all the way to Erie, Pennsylvania.

So look, Joe Biden was able to make a real improvement over Clinton’s numbers when it came to white working-class voters in Pennsylvania, as well as in Michigan and Wisconsin. It wasn’t a huge improvement, but because those kind of voters are such a large share of the electorate, a small improvement actually meant a lot. So the question is whether Kamala will be able to hold on to the small improvement that Joe Biden made, and whether that will help determine the election here in Pennsylvania.

I feel like she’s also going to have to say more about fracking, because in 2019, she very clearly stated that she was against fracking. Fracking is a huge part of the economy in your state.

For the western one third of the state, especially in southwestern Pennsylvania, which is around the Pittsburgh area, fracking has led to a boom. Pennsylvania is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, and those are highly unionized, well paying jobs. I have seen public reporting, I think it was in The New York Times last week, that Kamala Harris actually has evolved. [Ed: The ​​Harris campaign recently pledged that she won’t ban fracking.]

Let’s just say that now her view is more in line with what President Biden’s was when it comes to fracking. That’s where our Democratic governor and our two Democratic senators are as well. That’s certainly the more helpful position here in Pennsylvania, even though, again, this is actually not a big issue in the Philadelphia area or the eastern third of the state.

I agree that simply turning the base out is probably a big thing right now. What are the other challenges she’s going to face in Pennsylvania?

Part of the reason why we’re such a closely divided state is we are very representative of the nation as a whole. But rural Pennsylvania, that’ll be an area where she’ll have to focus—and again, not necessarily expecting to win—and making sure that she limits those losses. How she handles and navigates the Israel-Gaza issue, for instance, will really matter. It is a highly fraught issue, which cuts both ways in a state like Pennsylvania where you have younger and very progressive activists, but also a not-insignificant Jewish American population. And of course, not all Jewish Americans are of the same mind, but those who are, let’s say, traditionally pro-Israel Democrats, are higher in number in our state than in most other states, with the exception of maybe New York, Florida, and Illinois.

I think Josh would do a very good job. I happen to be in the very nice position, I guess, of being friends with literally three of the leading contenders right now. I mean, I’ve known Josh for 20 years. We literally served together in neighboring state house districts. So I’ve known him and been friends with him for a long time. I’ve known Pete Buttigieg for about the same length of time…
I forgot to mention Pete!

Well, yeah, I think Pete is still in contention. Of course, none of us totally knows. I’m also so glad that the rest of the country is getting to see what I’ve known for the last decade, and that is just how incredibly talented Tim Walz is. He’s been a friend of mine for a decade. We served together in the House. He was literally my coach—my football coach on the congressional football team. He is an authentically great messenger for Democratic values and a guy who was able to win over both progressives and Republicans at the same time and do so in a very authentic way. So I think we have an embarrassment of riches.

But does she need to pick Shapiro to win Pennsylvania?

I don’t think Kamala needs to pick any one specific person in order to win or lose. I mean, as I said before, ultimately she needs to pick the person she would be most comfortable with playing a very senior role on her team and basically be a governing partner. I know that’s not the sexy answer. Everyone focuses on the election, but actually their governing is much more important. The reality is, for 99 percent of people, they’re making their decision based on who’s the top of the ticket and not the number two role.

Whether she chooses Shapiro or not, your state is already the epicenter of this battle to define Harris. And it’s going to be a bellwether for the entire race.

For those of us in the Philadelphia area, almost every ad right now is a political ad. I mean, there was already a lot of advertising before the last couple of weeks, but it really ramped up where literally the solid majority of TV ads right now are political ads, and almost all of them are either Kamala ads from her side—our side—or anti-Kamala ads from the Trump side. So there’s clearly a race right now to define her.

The Trump ad, I will tell you—and I missed the disclaimer, I couldn’t tell if it was from the Trump campaign or one of his super PACs—but it literally defined her as a “San Francisco liberal,” and the last shot was a picture of her with Nancy Pelosi at the State of the Union.

That’s a pretty old fashioned Republican trick, going back to 1984, when Democrats held their convention in San Francisco and Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was a cabinet official under Reagan, coined the phrase “San Francisco Democrats.” So Republicans have been using that for a very long time. and are obviously attempting to make it stick to Kamala. On the flip side, our side is attempting to point out that she was a tough prosecutor. She took on a lot of special interests and won. She was a successful senator, and has done substantive things as vice president.

That’s the race right now—to define Kamala—because for a lot of people, even though they know the name, they don’t tend to know who the vice president is.