Vance and Walz press corps revive a tradition on their campaign planes

The 2024 vice presidential candidates this week have separately participated in a decades-old campaign tradition: answering questions from their traveling press corps written on an orange that’s rolled up the aisle to the front of their campaign planes.

Gov. Tim Walz’s press corps was first to resume the tradition, which can be traced back to the 1990s, but their lighthearted question wasn’t answered until about a day and a half later.

As Walz was on his flight to the West Coast Sunday, a CBS News reporter rolled their question, written in black marker, forward at about 1:10 p.m. CT: “DREAM DINNER GUEST?”

The press was told the fruit made its way about halfway to its destination before another passenger helped get it to the front of the aircraft. It was not rolled back with an answer that night.

The next day, the question had still not been answered. One Walz staffer told the press he thought it was a good question. Another said the governor was mulling it over.

Then, on Monday night around midnight PST, the orange was returned to the press. The answer was Bruce Springsteen, who recently endorsed the Kamala Harris-Walz ticket.

When Sen. JD Vance’s embedded reporters saw on social media what their counterparts on the Walz plane had done, they knew they had to partake.

Flying from his campaign event in Detroit on Tuesday afternoon, Vance’s travel press agreed to write the following question on their orange: “FAVE SONG?”

When CNN attempted and failed to roll the orange up to Vance, ABC stepped in and successfully rolled the orange up to Vance’s cabin, passing Vance’s Secret Service detail and staff, leading several of them to question whether or not they just saw an orange roll past them.

Within minutes, Vance rolled the orange back, with the answer Led Zeppelin’s “Ten Years Gone.”