Tim Walz and Bill Clinton visit Durham on the first day of early voting

Durham Democrats celebrated the first day of early voting Thursday with appearances by Tim Walz and Bill Clinton at an invite-only rally with about 200 officials and supporters in the gymnasium of the Lyons Park Community Center.

But in the rare case that the warm-up band was more exciting than the headliner, it may be that Durham’s own lineup of younger local officials inadvertently overshadowed the former president and current vice presidential contender.

The first speaker, Mayor Pro-Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton, danced as he took the stage to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?”

“Bull City, are you in the house today?” he asked the borderline boisterous crowd before launching into a five-minute rallying cry that focused on the local aspects — an investment in affordable housing and help for small business owners — of the Harris-Walz economic agenda.

“We are the fourth largest city in America,” Middleton said. “And since this is bull town, we know a bull when we see one. We recognize the choice that lies before us in this election.”

“NORTH CAROLINAAAAAAAAA,” Middleton bellowed. “Come and arise!”

After Middleton, Sheriff Clarence Birkhead emphasized the law-and-order quality of the ballot, and State Senator Natalie Murdock and State Rep. Zach Hawkins reminded the crowd of the importance of voting in a swing state.

“The road to the White House leads through the great state of North Carolina. But more importantly, it runs right here through the Bull City,” Hawkins said. Behind him was a huge poster telling attendees: “NORTH CAROLINA VOTES EARLY.”

The high energy continued as the crowd, packed with even more local politicians like Mayor Leonardo Williams, state Sen. Mike Woodard and Sophia Chitlik, Woodard’s likely successor, waited 40 minutes for Walz and Clinton to appear. Some young people in the stands filmed a version of the viral “HOT-TO-GO” dance while another part of the room waved.

When Walz finally took the stage, he seemed at home amid a fluttering sea of ​​orange text on camouflage-backed campaign signs. In his 30-minute speech, he railed against the disinformation — about migrants and election results — that has become a hallmark of the Trump-Vance campaign and painted a bleak picture of a second Trump administration.

“You remember 2016, you remember the journey [Trump] talked about,” said Walz. “This is not that Trump. This is something much more crazy, something much more desperate.”

The crowd booed and cheered at the appropriate moments, although a line about Walz and Harris both being gun owners received less applause from the ultra-blue crowd.

Clinton delivered the message that he was “running for nothing other than the future of my grandchildren” and pointed out that he was only two months younger than Trump. He later joked that he had a petition ready in case he was sent to prison by an armed Justice Department of the second Trump administration.

“I want him to move me to Guantanamo because when you’re 78 years old, you’re much more worried about it being too cold than you are about it being too hot,” Clinton said.

But after about 20 minutes, the mood had clearly shifted from the block party to the lecture hall as Clinton demonstrated with his raised, shaking hands that there was a supply and demand imbalance in Economics 101. Members of the crowd fidgeted in silence as his voice, mixing with the hum of the gym’s air conditioning, was interrupted only by the occasional ringing of a telephone. Several people quietly left the gym.

As the former president’s speech reached the 40-minute mark, having touched on every hot-button issue from tariffs to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conspiracy theories about weather control, he struggled to convey as rousing or succinct a message as the younger Durham politicians . And he may have inadvertently reminded some Democrats why they recently pushed 81-year-old Joe Biden off the ticket.

“Bill, we can’t hear you,” an audience member shouted after Clinton’s first few lines were too quiet to be transmitted clearly over the gym’s public address system.

Given the Democrats’ reported poor performance among black voters this election cycle, one wonders whether the Obamas would have been unavailable.

After the speeches, however, there was no shortage of admirers pushing through the crowd to take selfies with the wide-eyed Walz and the smiling Clinton.

Reach reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story below [email protected].

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