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An estimated 43.5 million people tuned into the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1. Approximately 80 of those viewers were at The Chapel, a former chapel turned live music venue on Valencia Street.
As the attendees waited for the debate to begin, a nervous tension filled the air. Patty Perkins and Steven Hamilton, longtime San Francisco residents, attended together. “I would like to see Walz take on feminist issues, because the other team is the opposite of that,” Perkins said before the event. “I would love to hear about LGBT issues, but I don’t know if that’s actually going to come up in today’s debate,” Hamilton added.
Attendee Rachel Leiter said “I would love to hear some more specifics about the plans for the immigration system and how it’s going to become more humane, if that’s the plan.”
Estella Brenneman was interested in hearing about both national and international issues. “I came away from the presidential debate being really interested in the conversation around abortion, Israel and Palestine and climate change. So I’m curious about how all of those will get addressed this evening,” Brenneman said.
At 6 p.m., the vice presidential candidates, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Senator JD Vance started the debate. CBS News journalists Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan moderated.
Vance focused on tightening border policies. “We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris started and said that she wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies. Ninety four executive orders suspending deportations, decriminalizing illegal aliens, massively increasing the asylum fraud that exists in our system” Vance said.
Leiter said, “I feel like Republicans have really been controlling the narrative on [immigration] and been able to make it all about how to stop immigrants from coming in. There hasn’t really been anything on how to make immigration more efficient and humane.”
“I thought [Walz] did really well on women’s reproductive rights,” Hamilton said. When it came to abortion and reproductive rights, Walz addressed former President Trump’s claim that the bill Walz signed to ease abortion access in Minnesota allowed for abortion in the ninth month and allowed for infanticide. Minnesota law currently does not have a restriction for the stage of pregnancy in which abortion is available, but killing babies after birth is illegal.
Walz provided the examples of Amanda Zaworski and Hadley Duvall, two young women who, according to Walz, needed access to abortions. “In Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade. We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care.” Walz said. “This is a basic human right. […] This is about health care. […] We trust women. We trust doctors.” Both women have taken their stories to the press.
Danae Heald, a sophomore art history and museum studies major who attended the USF watch party on Lone Mountain, said “Compared to JD Vance, who kind of swerved around the topic [of abortion] a bit, it was nice to hear from Walz that he was very blatantly pro-choice.”
The candidates discussed the state of democracy, highlighting the aftermath of the 2020 election. “I believe that we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country […] It is the threat of censorship. It’s Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics. It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens,” Vance said.
Walz replied “[January 6th] was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say, and he is still saying, he didn’t lose the election.”
“Yeah, I think Tim Walz really crushed it with talking about January 6th.” Leiter said.
The debate ended with the candidates thanking each other, CBS News, and the American people. They lingered on stage, shook hands and introduced their wives to one another.
“I found the debate to be almost boring, but that was a positive for me because I feel like that’s how debates should be. I think we’ve gotten so accustomed to how wild and entertaining the debates with Trump and Biden have been that this was a nice change.” Heald said.
Caitlin Kennedy, a senior politics major, said, “I think despite their disagreements there were definitely moments of camaraderie, especially when candidates acknowledge shared goals such as improving national security. But I would say that in this vice presidential debate there was definitely a stark difference in demeanor and tone from the presidential debate a few weeks prior.”
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