D.N.C. Live Updates: Night 3 Will Give Tim Walz the Biggest Stage of His Life
D.N.C. 实时更新：第三晚将为蒂姆·沃尔兹提供他一生中最重要的舞台
The third night is focused on Mr. Walz, who rocketed from a low-profile governor to the party’s vice-presidential nominee. Abortion, border security and the Jan. 6 attack were early themes.
第三个晚上聚焦于沃尔兹先生，他从一位低调的州长迅速成为党的副总统候选人。堕胎、边境安全以及1月6日的袭击是早期讨论的主题。
在民主党全国大会的第三个晚上，明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹作为副总统候选人出席。CreditCredit...Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
肯特·西村为《纽约时报》撰写
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota will introduce himself to the nation Wednesday night, speaking to the largest audience of his political career on as he formally accepts the nomination for vice president and seeks to energize Democrats going into the final night of the party’s convention.
明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹将在周三晚上向全国介绍自己，这是他政治生涯中面对的最大观众群体。他将正式接受副总统提名，并希望在党代会的最后一晚激励民主党人。
On the gathering’s third night, speakers hailed Vice President Kamala Harris and assailed former President Donald J. Trump on a range of issues including immigration, abortion and democracy. Amid a parade of Democratic speakers, two self-described anti-Trump Republicans told the delegates that they would vote for Ms. Harris as a way of keeping Mr. Trump from returning to office.
在集会的第三个晚上，发言者们赞扬了副总统卡马拉·哈里斯，并在移民、堕胎和民主等多个问题上抨击前总统唐纳德·特朗普。在一场民主党发言者的阵容中，两位自称反特朗普的共和党人告诉与会代表，他们将投票支持哈里斯，以阻止特朗普重返总统职位。
Olivia Troye, who was an aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, and Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, both called Mr. Trump a dangerous threat to freedom and democracy and urged Republicans and independents not to support him. “Being inside Trump’s White House was terrifying,” Ms. Troye said. “But what keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back in.”
奥利维亚·特罗耶（Olivia Troye），前副总统迈克·彭斯（Mike Pence）的助手，以及前乔治亚州副州长乔夫·邓肯（Geoff Duncan），都称特朗普先生是对自由和民主的严重威胁，并呼吁共和党人和独立人士不要支持他。“身处特朗普的白宫让我感到恐惧，”特罗耶女士表示。“但让我无法入睡的是，如果他再次掌权会发生什么。”
A graphic video showing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol teed up a series of speakers warning about Mr. Trump’s support for the violence and his refusal to accept the results of the election. The video ended with the words “If re-elected, he will never be held accountable.”
一段视频展示了2021年1月6日对国会大厦的袭击，随后一系列演讲者警告特朗普支持暴力并拒绝接受选举结果。视频最后以“如果他连任，将永远不受追究。”结束。
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chairman of the Jan. 6 select committee that investigated the attack, told the crowd, “I remember that dark history. It’s my own history,” tying Jan. 6 to the racial violence his father experienced as a Black man in the Deep South.
密西西比州的代表本尼·汤普森，1月6日特别委员会的主席，向人群说道：“我记得那段黑暗的历史。这是我自己的历史。”他将1月6日的事件与他父亲作为南方黑人所经历的种族暴力联系在一起。
Here’s what else to know:
这里还有其他需要了解的事项：
Tonight’s speakers: Former President Bill Clinton, who has become one of the party’s elder statesmen since leaving office nearly a quarter century ago, is scheduled to deliver another dose of big-name support for Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz. Other expected speakers include Representative Andy Kim, who cleaned up the Capitol after the riot on Jan. 6, 2021; the one-time presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation; Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former Speaker; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York; and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, one of the other finalists to join Ms. Harris on the ticket.
Defending border policy: Several speakers aggressively confronted a topic long believed to be a Republican advantage — the southern border. They hammered Mr. Trump for opposing a bipartisan border bill that Ms. Harris supported, calling it a cynical political calculation on the former president’s part. “All he knows is tearing families apart,” said Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, one of several speakers who said Ms. Harris would balance border security and the humanitarian concerns of migrants seeking refuge.
辩护边境政策：几位发言者激烈地讨论了一个长期以来被视为共和党优势的话题——南部边境。他们批评特朗普反对哈里斯支持的两党边境法案，称这是前总统的愤世嫉俗的政治算计。“他所知道的就是拆散家庭，”加利福尼亚州的民主党代表皮特·阿吉拉尔说，他是几位发言者之一，表示哈里斯会在边境安全和寻求庇护的移民的人道关切之间取得平衡。Hostage’s family speaks: While the evening featured much of the same enthusiasm that has seized the party since Ms. Harris’s ascent to the top the ticket, two speakers stilled the crowd: Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the Americans held hostage in Gaza since Oct. 7. “Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you. Stay strong. Survive,” Ms. Goldberg said. The couple praised President Biden and Ms. Harris for seeking the return of their son and other hostages, even as protesters outside of the convention demanded a greater focus on Palestinians killed in Gaza.
Focus on abortion: On a night styled as “a fight for our freedoms,” several early speakers discussed abortion, a key issue Democrats believe can drive turnout in important swing states. Some invoked the conservative policy plan Project 2025, calling it a blueprint for an assault on freedom by Mr. Trump, who has sought to distance himself from its proposals.
专注于堕胎：在一个被称为“为我们的自由而战”的夜晚，几位早期发言者讨论了堕胎问题，这是民主党认为能够在重要摇摆州激励选民投票的关键议题。一些人提到了保守派政策计划“2025计划”，称其为特朗普先生对自由的攻击蓝图，而他试图与该计划的提案保持距离。A candidacy in peril: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion whose independent candidacy for president has long been viewed as potentially playing a spoiler role in the election, is expected to end his troubled campaign this week, according to three people briefed on his plans, and is in talks to throw his support behind Mr. Trump. His campaign, strapped for money and facing hurdles getting onto the ballot in a number of states, has scheduled an event for Friday in Arizona.
一场岌岌可危的候选资格：罗伯特·F·肯尼迪 Jr.，这位政治世家出身的独立总统候选人，长期以来被认为可能在选举中扮演搅局者的角色，预计将在本周结束他艰难的竞选活动。三位知情人士透露，他正在与特朗普先生洽谈以表达支持。他的竞选活动资金紧张，并面临在多个州进入选票的障碍，已在亚利桑那州安排了周五的活动。
Trump in North Carolina: Mr. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, campaigned this afternoon in Asheboro, N.C., focusing on national security in a state that Mr. Trump won twice. The Republican ticket appeared to be on solid footing in North Carolina before President Biden withdrew from the race last month and endorsed Ms. Harris. She edged ahead of Mr. Trump in the state in a recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College.
Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.
There may be those who will say making light of the conservative dictates of Project 2025 is inappropriate, but this Kenan Thompson recitation of the blueprint’s highlights seems to be an acknowledgment that Democrats need to use humor to make their warning stick.
可能有人会认为轻视2025项目的保守指令是不妥的，但肯南·汤普森对蓝图要点的解读似乎表明，民主党需要运用幽默来增强他们警告的影响力。
Every night, the Democrats have sent at least one person out with an oversize replica of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint for a Republican presidential administration. Tonight, the comedian Kenan Thompson is taking a turn. “You ever seen a document that can kill a small animal and end democracy at the same time?” he says. “Here it is.”
每晚，民主党都会派出至少一个人，手持一份《遗产基金会2025项目》蓝图的超大复制品，准备迎接共和党的总统政府。今晚，喜剧演员基南·汤普森也参与其中。“你见过能同时杀死小动物和摧毁民主的文件吗？”他说。“这就是。”
He likened Project 2025 to a lengthy “terms and conditions” contract when downloading a new app, except this contract was for a second Trump administration.
It was a remarkably somber moment inside the arena as Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg spoke of their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a hostage in Gaza for more than 10 months — 320 days, as the tape on their shirts said.
While the Israeli-Hamas war has been one of the only divisive undercurrents of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, delegates stood in rapt attention as Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Polin took the stage.
The crowd chanted, “Bring them home,” and Ms. Goldberg doubled over in tears.
“This is a political convention,” Mr. Polin said, “but needing our only son and all of the cherished hostages home is not a political issue.”
Mr. Goldberg-Polin, 23, is one of eight U.S. citizens in captivity in Gaza. Part of his left arm was blown off by a Hamas grenade as he was abducted on Oct. 7.
Ms. Goldberg emphasized the diversity of the more than 100 hostages still in Gaza.“They are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists,” she said. “They are from 23 different countries. The youngest hostage is a 1-year-old redheaded baby boy, and the oldest is an 86-year-old mustachioed grandfather.”
Mr. Polin ended with a plea for peace.
“There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East,” he said. “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.”
Citing Jewish texts, he added: “Every person is an entire universe. We must save all these universes.”
Stevie Wonder called on the delegates to reject “hate and division” to get to a “higher ground,” a nod to one of his biggest hits, “Higher Ground.” He then walked over to the keys for a performance of the song.
Olivia Julianna is the second social media influencer — or content creator, as the D.N.C. is calling them — to speak tonight. She told me a few days ago that the theme of her speech was going to be “freedom,” but last night she said that organizers had asked her to shorten her speech and had moved it from the main stage to a special creators’ box just off the arena floor. A reproductive rights activist from Texas with a big social media following, she encourages those in Gen-Z to vote to make their voices heard, saying, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
Watching one speaker after another, it is easy to lose the larger narrative. But in this case, the Democrats running the convention are assembling a lengthy indictment of Donald Trump as a man who is not who he says he is. In this story, he isn’t tough on the border. He is an opportunist who scuttled a border security bill. He isn’t a friend of the police. He orchestrated a brutal riot that led to the deaths and injuries of police officers. And he isn’t the friend of Latinos. He is an enemy to their aspirations.
Reporting from Chicago.
Wes Moore, the Democratic governor of Maryland, was still shaking hands as his body man began to lead him out of the afternoon cocktail party at an Italian restaurant above the Chicago River. Flanked by a retinue of aides and security officials, he and his wife, Dawn, left through a side door and made their way into a narrow hallway, past waiting trays of meatballs and lamb chops, into a prep kitchen — wrong way, everybody turn around — and, finally, into a capacious service elevator.
Yes, the Democratic National Convention is a party. It is also a nonstop logistical scramble for high-profile elected officials like Mr. Moore, whose presence is in constant demand.
“You see a lot of back kitchens,” he said. “There’s a slogan we learned in the military: ‘Stay frosty.’ Because things are going to move and shift, and I think there’s been a lot of that, that we’ve seen, from the convention.”
Mr. Moore, 45, a former Army captain who served in Afghanistan, was a guest of honor at the cocktail reception, sponsored by the With Honor PAC, which works with veterans in Congress. He had arrived there straight from an event across town, a panel discussion hosted by the Black Economic Alliance, where he spoke about patriotism, his family and his work on criminal justice reform. There had been many hands to shake.
It was an anxious few hours for his team. His press secretary, Carter Elliott, was doing double-duty as a photographer, dressed in a short-sleeve shirt and Converse sneakers. He had walked from the previous event. The night before, he had spent three hours stuck on a bus trying to get into the convention center.
If the life of an ambitious Democratic governor at the D.N.C. is complicated, the life of an aide may be more so, and perhaps less dignified.
On Tuesday, David Turner, Mr. Moore’s senior adviser and communications director, was concerned about trying to conserve Mr. Moore’s voice: He was scheduled to speak at a breakfast early Wednesday morning, and deliver a prime-time speech Wednesday night at the convention.
“This will be hard, because he is chatty,” Mr. Turner said.
In the restaurant freight elevator, Mr. Moore said he enjoyed the backstage conversations at the convention, which he found to be the best place to talk about big ideas. “That’s where the change actually happens,” he said.
The Moore team was disgorged into a dark locker room on the ground floor of the restaurant. Dawn Moore walked ahead, in a champagne pantsuit and white sneakers — she had heels on at the earlier event, but there was a long night ahead — and descended into an underground loading dock, where two black Chevy Suburbans were waiting.
Standing next to a green dumpster, Mr. Moore had a few thoughts about what he had learned in Chicago. “I’ve been amazed at how I do not like deep dish pizza,” he said. Mr. Elliott winced.
Mr. Moore continued: “Chicago cuisine is just not good. It’s not good. I know I’m very biased.”
Then he had to go. In a matter of minutes, he was due on the convention floor for roll call. As the cars rolled away, Mr. Elliott sighed, deeply.
“He said he didn’t like Chicago cuisine,” Mr. Elliott said. “Pritzker has already ratioed us once on Twitter,” he said, apparently referring to an incident last month when JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, shot back at a post from Mr. Moore praising the superiority of Maryland cheese dogs.
Then, Mr. Elliott said: “We need to get out of here before they close the garage door.”
Organizers clearly are trying to end this dark segment on a lighter note, capping it with Representative Andy Kim of New Jersey, who in the wee hours of Jan. 7 was captured in a photo kneeling alone in the Capitol Rotunda, picking up trash left behind by rioters who had stormed the building.
“What I learned on Jan. 6 is that all of us are caretakers for our great republic,” Kim says. “We can heal this country, but only if we try.”
Aquilino Gonell emerged as one of the most vocal Capitol Police officers to condemn Trump’s role in stoking the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. A U.S. Army veteran, he wrote in an op-ed that he had “worked on the force for 16 years, but I’ve never witnessed anything like the Jan. 6 attack — even in combat in Iraq.” His right foot and his left shoulder were so badly damaged he required several surgeries to repair them.
“I was assaulted with a pole attached to the American flag,” Gonell said. “President Trump summoned our attackers, incited them. He betrayed us.”
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who led the congressional proceedings investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, tied the day's violence to the racial violence his father experienced as a Black man in the Deep South. “I remember that dark history. It’s my own history,” he said.
The videos assembled by the Jan. 6 Committee, shown in the convention hall now, still have the power to shock, though they have been shown many, many times.
A shocking, violent Jan. 6 video ended with the words “If elected, he will never be held accountable.” The crowd broke into a chant of “Lock him up.”
Duncan received perhaps the loudest ovation I’ve heard so far tonight. His line directed at Republicans who don’t vote for Trump — “You’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot.” — sent the arena into a frenzy.
Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, has turned so hard on Trump in a state where the Republican Party is hard-core MAGA that he has been excommunicated from his party.
There are Republicans who retain the conservatism but cannot stomach Trump. There are Republicans who have changed their ideological stripes as they recoil from Trumpism. And then there is Geoff Duncan, who has made his contempt for Trump his guiding light.
We’ve reached the Jan. 6 segment of the evening, beginning with Olivia Troye, a one-time adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence. By giving Troye a platform, Democrats are clearly hoping to expand their tent to include independent and moderate conservatives turned off by the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Troye emphasized a theme that Republicans who have spoken throughout the week have repeatedly hit on, trying to create a permission structure for Republicans to vote for a Democrat even if they never previously imagined they would. “You aren’t voting for a Democrat; you’re voting for democracy,” she says. “You aren’t betraying our party; you’re standing up for our country.”
For the past few years, the national debate on immigration has centered on the 2,000-mile line dividing Mexico and the United States. But Representative Pete Aguilar and other speakers tonight have sought to reframe the conversation, casting the nation as a land of opportunity and speaking of immigrant families, documented and undocumented, who have long lived, worked and contributed to the nation’s society, culture and economy.
If you are just tuning in, you might be noticing this has been a sustained parade of Latino speakers attesting to their faith in Harris on controlling the border and treating immigrants fairly. It is a testimony to how vital Latino voters will be in November and how much ground Democrats believe they have to make up since the erosion of Hispanic support for President Biden.
This is surprising. Carlos Eduardo Espina, an influencer who is speaking now, was just incorrectly identified as a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He is a graduate of Vassar College and recently completed his law degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Espina is the child of immigrants from Mexico and Uruguay. He’s also a TikTok star with more than 10 million followers and was brought to the D.N.C. as an influencer. In his speech, he’s calling Donald Trump’s policies on immigration “downright un-American.” He cites Ronald Reagan to say that “welcoming immigrants isn’t a Democratic or Republican value, it’s an American value.”
Javier Salazar, the sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, just finished attesting to his faith in Kamala Harris on the issue of the U.S.-Mexico border. For the Texas uninitiated, Bexar County is home to San Antonio, a Democratic redoubt. It is not Texas deep red. But sheriffs have been the law enforcement officers most closely allied with Trump, so his words might hold weight.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is telling the story of how an improbable deal on a sweeping immigration reform bill, which would have effectively mandated that the border be shut down to migrants altogether when numbers reach unmanageable levels, was scuttled earlier this year after Trump demanded the bipartisan effort be killed. “It would have had unanimous support if it weren’t for Donald Trump,” Murphy says.
This is a line Senate Democrats are already deploying on television commercials in an attempt to defend against an onslaught of Republican messaging accusing their party of being weak on securing the border.
Representative Pete Aguilar, a Democrat from California, last year became the highest-ranking Latino in the House, assuming the party’s No. 3 position, with a pledge that Democrats would take back the majority in 2024.
Aguilar argues only Harris and Walz will fight for the American dream – it’s a powerful message for Latinos, who polls show remain the only demographic still optimistic about upward mobility in the United States.
“We don’t have to choose between a secure border and building an America for all,” Aguilar says, adding that Harris “will do both.”
Earlier today, I was talking to Sarah Longwell, a Republican pollster who has turned on Trump. She told me the border is a real vulnerability, but if Harris and Democrats hammer Trump on the tough, bipartisan border bill that Trump scuttled for political reasons, Harris can at least shrink his lead on the issue.
If you are just joining us, the Democrats are trying to allay concerns from swing voters that Kamala Harris can be tough, even on the issues where she is most politically vulnerable, especially the border.
Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, speaking now, has been a close ally of President Biden’s and is expected to chair the convention on Thursday, when Vice President Kamala Harris will introduce herself as the party’s presidential nominee. As a congresswoman from a border state, she has also been a key voice on immigration, perhaps Democrats’ most significant political vulnerability as they head into November.
Escobar says it has been Republicans who have blocked an overhaul of the nation’s broken immigration laws the last three times Congress has tried. She also says she was with Harris when the vice president visited the border city of El Paso — countering false Republican claims that she has never visited the border at all.
Uncommitted delegates, who are pushing for the Harris campaign to support a total cease-fire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel, earlier held a news conference to repeat their request for a Palestinian American to speak from the main stage of the convention. The uncommitted delegates filed into the arena a few minutes later so that they could be present for the speech by Goldberg and Polin.
Reporting from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Ana Navarro, a Republican and media personality who has long criticized Donald J. Trump, hosted the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday and talked about a thorny issue that Democrats tend to avoid: communism.
Mr. Trump and his allies have for years sought to appeal to Latino and Asian American voters who have fled communist and socialist governments, casting Democrats as purveyors of a dangerous ideology they associate with authoritarian leaders, food shortages, rampant corruption and economic decline.
On Mr. Trump’s social media site, just before the convention, the former president posted a fake image of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in an arena with a communist hammer-and-sickle flag.
And at a Pennsylvania rally last week, Mr. Trump said, “After causing catastrophic inflation, ‘Comrade Kamala’ announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls.”
Ms. Navarro, whose family fled a Nicaragua ruled by the leftist Sandinistas in 1980, when she was 8, brought her own experience to bear. She turned Mr. Trump’s remarks about communism, and his comment last year that he would be a dictator for one day, against him.
“I know communism,” Ms. Navarro said Tuesday night. “I don’t take it lightly. And let me tell you what communist dictators do, and it’s never just for one day.”
She said that communist leaders attack the free press, put “their unqualified relatives in cushy government jobs,” refuse to accept legitimate elections and call for violence to stay in power. “Now, you tell me something,” she said. “Do any of those things sound familiar? Is there anybody running for president who reminds you of that?”
Communism is a wedge issue that has long divided Latinos in Florida, where Cubans who fled Fidel Castro’s revolution and Cuban Americans have long identified with the Republican Party and have played an outsized role in the state and national politics.
Mr. Trump deployed the specter of communism and socialism to significant effect nationally during his 2020 re-election campaign. A post-mortem of the election results by Equis, a Democratic research firm, found more than 40 percent of Latino voters across the country showed concern that Democrats were embracing socialist and leftist ideologies. During his campaign this year, Mr. Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal, has portrayed himself as a victim of socialists and communists.
Behind the scenes at the Democratic National Convention, delegates from Uncommitted — a movement calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel — are demanding that a speaker of Palestinian descent address the convention from the main stage, following reports that relatives of a hostage being held in Gaza will speak on Wednesday evening.
“Uncommitted delegates urge the Democratic Party to reject a hierarchy of human value by ensuring Palestinian voices are heard on the main stage,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the absence of Palestinians addressing the convention “sends a troubling message to our antiwar voters, suggesting they aren’t truly included in this party.”
The statement came after a Jewish magazine, The Forward, reported that the parents of Hersh Polin, who was abducted from Israel on Oct. 7 in the Hamas-led attack that set off the war in Gaza, were expected to speak at the convention on Wednesday night. “We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians,” Uncommitted wrote.
The lineup of speakers that convention organizers released on Wednesday evening included Mr. Polin’s parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin.
Uncommitted’s campaign to make the war in Gaza a focus of the convention comes as the death toll there has surpassed 40,000, according to Gazan health authorities. Hopes for the survival or recovery of the more than 100 hostages, some believed to be dead, who are still being held in the enclave have grown dimmer. The Israeli military announced Tuesday that its forces had recovered the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in Gaza, and the latest effort by the Biden administration to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appeared to have reached a stumbling block, with many issues as yet unresolved.
Margaret DeReus, who heads the Middle East Institute for Understanding, a nonprofit advocacy group working with Uncommitted, said in a phone interview from Chicago that as she and her colleagues have walked the convention floor — wearing stoles printed to resemble kaffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that have become a symbol of Palestinians, and bearing the words “Democrats for Palestinians” — many attendees have expressed strong support for a permanent cease-fire. But the official convention program has left her feeling “completely alienated,” she said, giving her “a feeling that the party wants to brush the issue of Gaza under the rug.”
Democratic leadership is out of touch with its base when it comes to the war in Gaza, Ms. DeReus argued. But she said she is hopeful that Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats’ presidential hope, will “say something that indicates a serious, tangible shift” from the Biden administration’s current policies when she accepts the party’s nomination on Thursday.
Ms. Harris has expressed “more empathy for Palestinian suffering” than the president, she said, but “what we need to hear is that her administration will be different.”
Reporting from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
Lauren Underwood was running late, but she couldn’t not stop for a selfie. Or five.
A Democratic congresswoman from Chicago who represents the city’s western suburbs, she can’t go anywhere this week without being recognized as her hometown hosts her party’s national convention.
In Washington, where she is completing her third term, Ms. Underwood is known more for her policy work than viral moments. Though she is a co-chair of the House Democrats’ policy and communications committee, she largely blends in as a rank-and-file member.
But in Chicago, a city she has called home since she was 3, Ms. Underwood is much more of a household name.
“It’s different when it’s in your hometown,” she said in an interview inside the McCormick Place convention hall, where Democratic delegates are conducting business.
Her supporters this week include young liberal organizers and older convention volunteers. And perhaps most noticeably, sisters from her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, of which Vice President Kamala Harris is also a member. Several wanted pictures and hugs as they spotted her walking to a car outside the McCormick Place perimeter.
As she posed for photos with constituents and admirers, the sun shining on her blue linen suit, Ms. Underwood jokingly described herself as “very mindful” and “very demure,” nodding to a TikTok video that recently took the internet by storm.
“We’re supposed to just keep it nice, positive,” Ms. Underwood said, gleefully poking fun at some of the more stringent aspects of media training in Congress. “But then, you know, we add a little sass.”
Ms. Underwood, a 37-year-old registered nurse who is one of a handful of millennials in Congress, in fact describes herself as an introvert who prefers to talk policy with constituents over giving booming speeches from a stage. When she’s not in Washington or campaigning, she’s shopping for candles or treating herself to a solo lunch in her hometown. (She recommended the cafe at Restoration Hardware.)
And her parents, who are also her constituents, are part of her experience this week, serving as volunteers at the convention and joining her at the United Center for its evening programming.
And if she says she is not naturally inclined toward the spotlight, she is still ending up in it: Her Tuesday schedule included an appearance at a reception for House Democrats, a speech at a gathering for Democratic women and, later in the evening, an interview on “The Daily Show.”
Ms. Underwood, who was first elected in 2019, said she saw her political rise through the lens of her health care background. She is running for re-election this November and is heavily favored to win. She would welcome the chance to pursue higher leadership roles, she argued, if it would advance her goal of expanding access to affordable health insurance and lowering maternal mortality.
Asked if she would one day pursue a run for U.S. Senate in Illinois, she did not rule it out. But for now she seemed comfortable where she was.
“I am young and I have time to serve and grow the level of leadership and impact,” she said. “I have never had more power in the most straightforward sense of the word than I have right now.”
Reporting from Chicago
If there is one nearly universal American experience, regardless of background or political leaning, it’s McDonald’s.
Perhaps that’s why in his convention speech Wednesday night, Doug Emhoff, along with detailing the origins of his marriage to Vice President Kamala Harris, noted his work at the chain that serves — and employs — millions of voters and nonvoters alike.
“Money was tight, so I worked at McDonald’s in high school for some extra cash,” the second gentleman told the audience. “Not only was I employee of the month, but I still have the framed picture, which you just saw, and there was a ring, golden arches and all.”
Ms. Harris has also mentioned her McDonald’s stint, saying she worked there as a college student “to earn spending money.” She handled fries and ice cream, and worked as a cashier, at the McDonald’s in Alameda, Calif. — an experience she has woven into her campaign biography. (She also joined striking McDonald’s workers on a Las Vegas picket line in 2019, while running for president.)
“She was the daughter of a working mom, and she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree,” one of her campaign advertisements says. “Kamala Harris knows what it’s like to be middle class.”
For most Americans, the golden arches of McDonald’s are iconic and can be found almost everywhere, with more than 13,000 locations nationwide. And one in eight people have worked at the fast-food giant, according to the company, making it an easy shorthand for politicians seeking to show they understand the working-class grind of trying to make ends meet.
“They are saying, ‘Listen, we’re the very fabric of America and we didn’t have anything handed to us, we had to work at it at a very young age,’” said D. Taylor, a national labor leader and former union president, who said his first job was at Kentucky Fried Chicken as a teenager.
Mr. Taylor said Ms. Harris’s fast-food experience could also blunt expected Republican attacks on her American-ness. “Nothing could be more American, in a way, than going to McDonald’s, which is in every single town,” he added.
Democrats are not the only ones who have pointed to McDonald’s on their résumé over the years. Paul Ryan, the former speaker of the House and Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2012, drew on his time working there on the campaign trail.
“If you work at McDonalds, someday you too can be speaker of the House,” Mr. Ryan tweeted in 2016.
The Harris campaign also has brandished its McDonald’s bona fides as a weapon against its opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, whom they have painted as out of touch and uninterested in aiding the middle class.
“Can you picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s, trying to run a McFlurry machine?” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate, sometimes says on the trail.