Reporter’s notebook: Walz, Vance continue orange bowling tradition with traveling press corps

“We need to roll an orange this weekend,” I texted the group chat of reporters that pack their lives into a suitcase and embeds with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, traveling across the country with the Democratic vice presidential candidate. 

It’s a decades-old tradition stemming back to the days of late President Ronald Reagan. The press corps traveling with a candidate rolls an orange up the aisle of the campaign jet with a question written on it. An answer is written on the orange and then rolled back to reporters.

Continuing the tradition with an almost-out-of-ink Sharpie, reporters on Sunday embedded with Walz asked him who his dream dinner guest was. 

I attempted to bowl the orange up the aisle of the Boeing 757-200, but it made it about halfway up the aisle and hit another passenger’s seat. I motioned for the passenger to roll the orange up further, and once he did, it was lost. Or so we thought. 

On Monday night, the orange was returned to us in the press motorcade with Walz’s answer: “Bruce Springsteen.”

Walz has been open about his love of Springsteen’s music. In March 2023, he declared “Bruce Springsteen Day” in Minnesota. 

Springsteen, a 20-time Grammy-winner, endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket last week in a video. 

“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are committed to a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, political point of view or sexual identity,” Springsteen said. “That’s the vision of America that I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”

Reporters embedded with Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, did their own orange roll Tuesday.

“To Vance: Fave song?” they wrote. 

“Led Zeppelin Ten Years Gone,” the orange read when it was swiftly returned, according to pool reports. 

In what has been an intense presidential campaign, this was a tradition that gave reporters and candidates a chance to lighten things up.