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 is branching out this week and holding his first solo events as Vice President 

’ running mate, making a five-state dash for campaign cash and addressing a key union gathering.

Walz will speak Tuesday at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees convention in Los Angeles before headlining a campaign fundraiser in Newport Beach, California. The 1.4-million-member union has endorsed Harris and says its members “are ready to mobilize to get out the vote in November.”

On Wednesday, Walz will address fundraisers in Denver and Boston, and he’ll do more of the same on Thursday in Newport, R.I., and Southampton, N.Y.

Walz’s focus on fundraising this week comes after he 

stormed through a series of battleground states

 with Harris last week to introduce himself to voters nationally. The two held rallies in 

, had his own rollout largely overshadowed by unforeseen events. It came after an 

 against the former president the previous weekend and before President Joe Biden 

abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed Harris

Walz has salted his early campaign appearances with talk of 

, stressing that he and Harris are championing being kind and neighborly. But he has frequently laid into Trump’s policies and the former president’s 34 felony counts in a New York hush money case.

His early life and political background

Explore the MPR Archive collection on Tim Walz

Vance, meanwhile, has leaned more heavily into the traditional No. 2 role of lobbing political attacks on the opposition. He spent much of last week holding his own events in the same states that Harris and Walz visited and arguing the Democratic ticket was too ultra-liberal for most Americans.

The senator has also suggested that Harris chose Walz over another contender for running mate, Pennsylvania Gov. 

Vance said picking Walz meant that Harris took advice from the “Hamas wing of her party.” He also criticized Walz’s military record, arguing that his retirement ahead of his National Guard Unit’s deployment to Iraq and his implication that he had served in a combat zone suggested “stolen valor garbage.” 

Over the weekend, the Harris campaign said that Walz 

 when he referenced “weapons of war that I carried in war.”

Vance has also faulted Harris and Walz for not sitting for media interviews. When his plane coincided with Harris’ on a tarmac in Wisconsin, where both sides held events last week, Vance 

began walking toward the vice president’s motorcade

, saying he wanted to talk to reporters traveling with her since she’d not done it herself.

 since Biden left the race but has said she wants to do that later in the month. She briefly took questions from the press traveling with her twice during her battleground travels last week — something Walz did not do, except for one session answering questions off-the-record, which meant his answers couldn’t be publicly shared.

Vance has appeared on a variety of podcasts angling to appeal to a younger voter set. At age 40, he’s closer to that demographic than any of the other three top-of-the-ticket contenders. Trump is 78, Harris is 59 and Walz is 60.

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is branching out this week and holding his first solo events as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, making a five-state dash for campaign cash and addressing a key union gathering.

Walz makes a 5-state dash for campaign cash this week, traveling solo for 1st time as running mate

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