Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday after their vice presidential debate the night before in New York City with multiple stops in key swing states.

Vance was in Michigan for two rallies, one outside Detroit and the other at a racetrack outside Grand Rapids, while Walz was touring Pennsylvania with Sen. John Fetterman. Vice President Kamala Harris, originally scheduled to be in Pennsylvania with Walz, was in Georgia to survey the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and former President Donald Trump was in Midland, Texas, for a fundraiser.

“It is great to be in the state that I think is going to be pivotal to giving us 270 electoral votes and making Donald Trump the next President of the United States,” Vance said at his first rally at an aerospace company in Auburn Hills, Mich. “We, of course, had a debate last night, a vice presidential debate. I thought it went pretty well.”

But one moment that stuck out at the debate — Vance refusing to say if Trump lost the 2020 presidential election — followed him onto the trail. Trump has long maintained he won the 2020 election despite election officials and courts across the country, including many Republicans, finding no merit to claims from him and his allies of widespread voter or election fraud.

Separately on Wednesday, special counsel Jack Smith submitted a 165-page filing in Trump’s federal election interference criminal case that charged Trump with pursuing “multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted” and alleged he “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.” Trump has denied all wrongdoing and called the filing “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional.”

During the debate, Vance first refused to say if he would certify election results if elected vice president, as Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence did after the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Then, when Walz asked him directly if Trump lost in 2020, Vance said, “I'm focused on the future” and accused Harris of censoring Americans during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Walz called it a “damning nonanswer.”

Vance said as recently as last month he would not have certified the results if he were in Pence’s spot at the time. While he has said it publicly less and less in recent months, Vance has long said he thought the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, including in a 2022 interview with Spectrum News as he ran for Senate.

When asked by a reporter in Auburn Hills, Vance said the “simple reason” he refused to answer the debate question was because “the media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago” while he’s focused on this year’s election. He then diverted into discussing “election integrity” and stopping non-citizens from voting despite that already being illegal and there being very few documented cases of non-citizens voting in federal elections. He later falsely claimed Harris “seems to want to make it easier for illegal aliens to vote.”

“We're going to talk about election integrity, because I believe that every vote ought to count, but only the legally cast votes, and that's why we fight for election integrity, and that's why we care so much about it,” Vance said, to cheers from the crowd.

Vance did say he believes 2024 will be “the safest and most secure election” because of “election integrity” efforts being undertaken by the Republican National Committee that he says weren’t being addressed in 2020. He also said he opposes early and absentee voting systems and would prefer most voting to occur on Election Day, “but it is what is, and we’ve gotta play by the rules that we’ve been given.”

Walz addressed the back and forth during a rally in York, Pa., on Wednesday, saying Vance’s response showed he was “speaking to an audience of one” in Trump.

“I served with Mike Pence in Congress. We disagreed on most issues, but in Congress and as a vice president, I never criticized Mike Pence's ethics and commitment to this country, and he made the decision for the Constitution. Mike Pence did his duty, he honored his oath, and he chose the Constitution over Donald Trump,” Walz said. “Understand in that 88th minute last night, with that damning non-answer, Sen. Vance made it clear he will always make a different choice than Mike Pence made. And as I said then, and I will say now, that should be absolutely disqualifying if you're asking to be the vice president of the United States”

Pence has declined to endorse Trump over his election denialism and the Capitol attack, where the then-vice president was rushed off the floor of Congress and hidden with his wife and daughter as Trump supporters stormed the building. Many of the Republicans who have backed Harris over Trump, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have cited Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss as disqualifying. 

At his second Michigan rally on Wednesday, at the racetrack in Marne, Vance attempted to label Harris as a “threat to democracy” because she became the Democratic Party’s nominee without winning a primary.

Michigan’s 15 Electoral College votes are coveted by both campaigns in what is projected to be a close election. Trump lost the state by around 150,000 votes in 2020 to now-President Joe Biden after beating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by about 10,000 votes in 2016. Recent public polls show Trump and Harris virtually tied in the state, but Rep. Elissa Slotkin — a Democrat running for an open Senate seat in Michigan — recently warned at a fundraiser that her internal polling has Harris “underwater,” according to Axios.

“I'm going to be back a lot. You're probably gonna get sick of me,” Vance said.

Trump has a rally scheduled in Saginaw, Mich., on Thursday and Harris will be in Detroit and Flint, Mich., on Friday, the eighth visit by the vice president to Michigan since Biden dropped out of the race this summer. Trump also has a speech scheduled at the Detroit Economic Club on Oct. 10.

Pennsylvania, where Walz was stumping, and its 19 Electoral College votes, are viewed to be just as important by the campaigns, though particularly by Democrats. Biden beat Trump there by around 80,000 votes in 2020 after Trump won by around 44,000 votes in 2016. Recent polls show the candidates virtually tied there, as well.

On Saturday, Trump is set to rally in Butler, Pa., at the site where a gunman shot him and three others in an attempted assassination in July.