Later today the Harris-Walz presidential campaign will announce the formation of a coalition of hunters, anglers, and gun owners and tomorrow Democratic vice-presidential candidate and sitting governor of Minnesota Tim Walz will kick off his state’s pheasant opener with a stage-managed event in southern Minnesota.
The outreach to rural voters comes as polls indicate a dead-heat in critical swing states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, states with significant percentages of hunters and anglers.
Sources in the Harris-Walz campaign confirmed today that a broad coalition of rural, conservation-minded, and what the campaign calls “responsible gun owners” will hold its first organizing call on Monday. Creation of the coalition is intended to create a “permission structure for those who simply love to hunt, fish, and be outside, to join the Harris-Walz campaign,” said a campaign staffer who spoke on background.
Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz will kick off with a national organizing call Monday to “mobilize conservationists, rural Americans, and responsible gun owners to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” the staffer told Outdoor Life. “Following the launch of this new coalition, the group will organize voters in their communities with in-person events leading up to election day.”
The presidential election is Tuesday, Nov. 5.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported yesterday that Gov. Walz will participate in Minnesota’s pheasant opener in the south-central town of Sleepy Eye tomorrow morning following his attendance tonight at a football game in nearby Mankato. Walz is an avid pheasant hunter and is expected to use tomorrow’s opener with invited digital influencers to “discuss the importance of conservation and the tradition of hunting as well as Second Amendment rights and common-sense gun safety,” says the campaign staffer.
While no significant policy announcements regarding natural-resource management or administration priorities are expected on Monday’s call, the coalition will appeal to rural voters who are uncomfortable both with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s conservation priorities and Harris’s stance on gun control. The coalition intends to confirm to rural voters that Harris and Walz support traditional activities, says Matthew Hildreth, the Harris campaign’s National Rural Engagement Director.
“In rural America, hunting and fishing is more than just a hobby,” says Hildreth. “For generations, it’s been our way of life that not only brings together friends, family, and neighbors; but also creates countless jobs in small towns and rural communities nationwide. While Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would disinvest in critical conservation efforts to support wildlife and limit access to hunting and fishing, Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the most consequential climate and conservation agenda in decades.”
While Trump has distanced his presidential campaign from Project 2025, the document generated by the conservative Heritage Foundation remains an influential blueprint for the first 180 days of a Trump administration. The document recommends a rollback of environmental protections implemented by the Biden administration as well as aggressive development of oil, gas, and coal reserves on public land.
Meanwhile, America’s gun lobby is deeply skeptical of a Harris administration’s position on guns. While Harris indicated in a televised interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes that she personally owns a gun, the NRA has called her “the most anti-gun candidate who has ever been as close as she is to becoming president.”
And the National Shooting Sports Foundation has warned that Harris would continue what it says is President Biden’s vilification of gun manufacturers.
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With only a little more than three weeks remaining in the presidential campaign, polls indicate the race “could not be closer,” with the Harris-Walz campaign neck and neck with the Trump-Vance ticket in seven battleground states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada.
Both tickets are courting young rural men as an important voting bloc. According to industry statistics, the overwhelming majority of hunters are white men. Angler demographics are more diverse, skewing younger and more ethnically varied, but fishing in America is also dominated by rural white men.
