ANALYSIS — The vice presidential race took center stage Wednesday as the former football coach and the retired Marine traded barbs in key battleground states.

Former officials and analysts contend data show voters overwhelmingly make their choices based on the two parties’ presidential nominees. But on the first full day they were opponents, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Sen. JD Vance were dashing ample spice onto an intriguing vice presidential race that offers voters a stark contrast.

In a surreal scene Wednesday, Vance walked from his private plane on an airport tarmac in Wisconsin to where Air Force Two had just parked. He addressed reporters there to cover the arrival of the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz. Vance called Harris’ failure to do interviews since becoming the presidential nominee “insulting to the American people” and told the journalists, “I wish she paid more attention to y’all.”

Shortly after that, Walz took the stage at an outdoor rally to “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. After initially focusing on his own life story as the campaign continued to introduce him to battleground voters, he shifted to attacking GOP nominee Donald Trump and mocking Vance, who he accused of “trashing” his hometown.

Here are three takeaways as the candidates duked it out in Big 10 country.

‘Mocks our laws’

“I learned how to compromise without compromising my values,” Walz said of his six terms as a Democratic House member from a rural southern Minnesota district. “Donald Trump, he sees the world differently than we see it. … This guy weakens our country to strengthen his own hand. He mocks our laws. He sows chaos and division amongst the people. And that’s to say nothing of the job he did as president.” 

A few hours earlier, Vance met with reporters in Shelby Township, Mich., not far from Detroit, where Harris and Walz were scheduled to hold another campaign event. It was the second consecutive day the GOP vice presidential nominee followed the Democratic duo to a swing state, and he dinged Walz for how he handled sometimes-violent Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis in 2020.

He accused Walz of “promoting rioters and looters burning down the city,” and described the Minnesota governor and Harris as pushing pro-criminal policies. But Vance’s crowd in a parking lot at a law enforcement facility was rather small, according to reporters on scene who posted pictures and videos on social media. At the same time, Harris campaign officials posted their own images of a long line waiting to get into her event in Eau Claire, Wis.

Vance on Tuesday defended Trump for not being on the campaign trail this week as Harris and Vance hit a number of battlegrounds. Trump’s No. 2 pointedly told a reporter that the former president was focused on fundraising while Vance followed the Democratic duo around the country as counter-programming. (Trump is slated to hold a rally in Montana, a state he won by more than 16 points in 2020, on Friday.)

Trump has reportedly been frustrated by the campaign cash Democrats have been raising since President Joe Biden announced July 21 he would not seek another term and endorsed Harris to succeed him. Ammar Moussa, a Harris spokesperson, on Wednesday posted on social media that the Harris campaign had “raised $36 MILLION in the 24 hours since we announced Governor Walz as our running mate.”

The Harris-Walz campaign and other Democrats are banking that her selection of the former teacher, football coach and Army National Guard veteran will keep her momentum alive. While Biden had dropped behind Trump both nationally and in battleground states, an average of surveys maintained by RealClear Polling on Wednesday showed Harris up — though by a paper-thin margin — nationally, 47.4 percent to 46.9 percent. Trump still had a small lead in an average of seven battleground states, 47.8 percent to 46.3 percent.

‘I know bullies’

Walz appeared to try playing what could be a key role for the campaign by being an attack dog against Trump and Vance.

He warned, if elected again, Trump would push policies that would would lead to “raising costs for the middle class” and “gutting Social Security and Medicare.” 

“Donald Trump is not for you or your family. And Trump’s running mate shares those same dangerous and backward beliefs,” Walz said before mocking Vance’s life story and memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”

“Just like all of us in regular America, we go to Yale, then we have our careers funded by Silicon Valley billionaires and then you write a book about the place and you trash that place,” Walz said to cheers. “C’mon, that’s not who Wisconsin is. That’s not who Minnesota is. We’re better than that.

“One of the best parts of this job is I can’t wait until the debate,” he added of his possible one-on-one with Vance. “I know bullies. … I am a teacher and I do observe things. … No one’s asking for this crazy stuff.”

‘Crazy radical’

With Walz only joining the ticket on Tuesday morning, Vance notably on Wednesday again focused most of his remarks on Harris.

After meeting with local law enforcement officials in Shelby Township, Vance called the former San Francisco prosecutor and California state attorney general “bad news.”

“The contrast could not be more clear,” he said. “Every law enforcement agency is telling you … she makes it harder to keep you safe. Donald Trump is good news, he makes it easier to keep you safe.”

He criticized Harris over the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border and the war in Gaza, saying the vice president “refuses to do what she needs to do to keep America safe” and “refuses to keep terrorists out of our country.”

But he did have some words for the candidate he could debate in coming weeks, saying, “Tim Walz is a crazy radical.”

He also suggested that a possible vice presidential showdown might not matter much come November.

“Most people are voting at the top of the ticket,” Vance said. “Most people are going to be voting for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.”