Walz Makes Dubious Claim About Vance’s Record, Gets Brutally Fact-Checked

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s claim that Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance never supported a pro-worker bill has been dubbed false by a Washington Post fact check.

“He’s one of four senators, four, that has never cast a vote on a pro-worker bill in his life,” Walz said of Vance during a Tuesday speech in Los Angeles. “Not once.”

When asked to support the claim, the Harris-Walz campaign cited a scorecard published by the AFL-CIO — the U.S’s largest federation of unions — that assesses lawmakers’ voting records on bills and appointments the AFL-CIO decides are “key” for working people, according to a fact-check in the Washington Post. Vance and three other Republican senators were given zero percent, but all four were U.S. Senate freshman at the time, meaning the scorecard only took 2023 into account — a year in the AFL-CIO only deemed seven votes worth scoring, five of which concerned nominations for Biden administration appointments.

Walz’s jab ignored the fact Vance co-sponsored the 2023 Railway Safety Act — a bill introduced in the wake of the Norfolk Southern train derailment — which would impose new safety requirements to protect rail workers. The bill stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate, but it has widespread