MINNEAPOLIS>> Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz knows how to lean into abortion rights on the debate stage. He’s done it before.

Just ask his Republican opponent in the 2022 Minnesota governor’s race, Scott Jensen, who was on the receiving end of Walz’s attacks — and saw firsthand how effective Walz could be in exposing an opponent’s shifting positions on abortion.

Jensen’s experience two years ago could provide insight into what to expect Tuesday when Walz debates GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance on CBS. Jensen said in an interview that Walz would be smart to talk about abortion.

“I think Tim Walz will say that loud and clear, and JD Vance needs to make it very clear that there’s not going to be a federal ban on abortion,” Jensen said. “That’s what Trump has said, and they need to make that very clear.”

Jensen, a family practice physician and former state senator, originally voiced support for an abortion ban in his 2022 campaign and picked a running mate with a record as an outspoken abortion opponent, former Minnesota Viking Matt Birk. That helped him get the Republican nomination, but it didn’t play so well with the broader electorate.

By the time Walz and Jensen met for their second of three debates two years ago, Jensen was trying to play down abortion, insisting it wasn’t on the ballot.

To Walz, it most certainly was. “My entire career I’ve trusted women to make their health care decisions,” Walz said as they met at the studios of KTTC-TV in Rochester in their only televised prime-time debate. “I don’t believe anybody who sits in this office should come between them.”

Jensen had asserted that state courts already decided that abortion rights were protected under the Minnesota Constitution and accused Walz of “fearmongering” by claiming they might be in danger.

But Walz pointed out that former President Donald Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court voted to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision after suggesting in their confirmation hearings that it was settled law. In Minnesota, Walz noted, governors appoint state Supreme Court justices.

“I just want to be absolutely clear: This is on the ballot,” Walz said. “It will impact generations to come.”

Vance and Trump are treading carefully after their previous support for limiting access to abortion, saying they now want to leave it to the states.

Trump repeatedly declined to say during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris whether he would veto a national abortion ban, insisting that a ban would not pass Congress anyway. Yet he often has taken credit for appointing the three justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion. He has backed away from statements he had made as recently as March that he would support a national ban.

Vance himself strongly opposed abortion in the runup to his 2022 senatorial election but aligned himself this year with Trump. Harris and Walz have been urging their audiences not to trust Trump and Vance on abortion rights.

Not only were abortion rights a winning issue in 2022 for Walz, who defeated Jensen by nearly 8 percentage points, the issue helped Democrats take control of both chambers of the Minnesota Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time in eight years. That “trifecta” let them enact a sweeping progressive agenda in 2023 that included stronger protections for abortion rights — and put Walz on Harris’ radar when she needed a running mate.

The Trump-Vance campaign has criticized Walz’s response to the rioting that accompanied protests over the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, and Vance could raise it again.