WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 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.
“With all the anxiety and uncertainty in the country, we have a responsibility to bring people together around common values,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in his convention keynote address on Monday. Then referring to top Republicans, he added, “Instead, antiworker forces have decided to double down on the most extreme, divisive agenda you can imagine."
On Wednesday, Walz will address fundraisers in Denver and Boston, and he'll do more of the same on Thursday in Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York.
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 Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.
Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was announced as Republican Donald Trump 's running mate during the GOP convention in Milwaukee, had his own rollout largely overshadowed by unforeseen events. It came after an assassination attempt against the former president the previous weekend and before President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed Harris during the following one.
Walz has salted his early campaign appearances with talk of joy and positivity, 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.
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. Josh Shapiro, because Shapiro's public support for Israel in its war with Hamas might have angered some progressives.
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 “misspoke” when he referenced "weapons of war that I carried in war.”
Orange County Republican Party Chairman Fred Whitaker, picked up on charges that Walz has been imprecise with his characterizations of his military service, saying in a statement Monday that the governor, "may walk away heavy with campaign cash from liberal donors but he will leave with the same empty and fake record he came in with.”
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.
Harris has yet to sit for a major interview 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.
Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard contributed to this report from Columbia, South Carolina.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
KARTALKAYA, Turkey (AP) — As flames tore through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in northwestern Turkey, friends Esra Karakisa and Halime Cetin stood helpless, paralyzed by the horror unfolding before them: people leaning out of smoke-filled rooms pleading for help and others making the harrowing decision to leap out.
The fire at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalya, in the Koroglu mountains in Bolu province, on Tuesday left at least 76 people dead and 51 injured. It came near the start of a two-week winter break for schools when hotels in the region are filled to capacity.
“There was no one around. They were calling for firefighters. They were breaking the windows. Some could no longer stand the smoke and flames, and they jumped,” Cetin, an employee at a hotel adjacent to the Grand Kartal, told The Associated Press.
Her colleague, Karakisa said: “It was awful. We were terrified. People were screaming. The cries of children especially affected us. We wanted to help but there was nothing we could do. I couldn’t look it was so terrifying.”
Authorities have assigned six prosecutors to investigate the cause of the fire, which appeared to have started at the restaurant section on the fourth floor of of the wooden-clad hotel and spread quickly through to the upper floors.
At least nine people have been detained for questioning, including the hotel owner.
Flags at government buildings and Turkish diplomatic missions abroad were lowered to half-staff as the nation shocked by the disaster observed a day of mourning for the victims.
Only 45 of the 76 bodies have been identified so far, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said late Tuesday.
One of the injured was in serious condition, while 29 others were treated and released, the Health Ministry said.
The hotel had 238 registered guests, according to Yerlikaya. The fire was reported at 3:27 a.m. and the fire department began to respond at 4:15 a.m., he told reporters.
Officials and witnesses said the rescue efforts were hampered by the fact that part of the 161-room hotel is on the side of a cliff.
According to Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, the hotel underwent inspections in 2021 and 2024, and “no negative situation regarding fire competence” was reported by the fire department.
Karakisa said she eventually brought clothes and water for the survivors while others rushed to bring mattresses for people to jump onto or propped up ladders against the wall to help them escape.
Among those who placed mattresses was Baris Salgur, a cleaner in a nearby hotel.
“They were saying, ‘Please help, we’re burning!' They were saying, ‘Call the fire department,' we were trying to calm them down, but there was nothing we could do, we couldn’t get in either,” Salgur, 19, said. " It was very high, we couldn’t extend a rope or anything of course. We were trying to do the best we could.”
“People jumped from a great height, I couldn’t look. There were two women at the top floor. The flames had literally entered the room. They couldn’t stand it and jumped,” he said.
Salgur described seeing a man on the top floors holding a baby and shouting for a mattress he could throw his baby on.
"We told him to be a little calmer. He waited, then the fire department came and took them (out), but unfortunately the baby had died from smoke inhalation,” he said.
Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Robert Badendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.
Tightened bed sheets hang from a window of a hotel where a fire broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A Turkish flag flag flies at half staff outside a hotel where a fire broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters and emergency teams work on the aftermath of a fire that broke out at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a hotel at a ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, in northwest Turkey, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Enes Ozkan/IHA via AP)