Democratic candidate Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, choosing a Midwestern governor, military veteran and union supporter who helped the state enact an ambitious Democratic agenda. Walz helped push progressive priorities, including sweeping protections for abortion rights and generous aid to families with the help of a Democratic-controlled Legislature.
Harris hopes to solidify her campaign’s position in the upper Midwest, a key region in presidential politics that is often a buffer zone for Democrats seeking the White House. Republican Donald Trump’s 2016 victories in Michigan and Wisconsin still haunt the party. So focus your attention on those states and expand your focus to Minnesota.
Walz, 60, joins Harris during one of the most tumultuous periods in modern American politics and promises an unpredictable future campaign. Republicans rallied around Trump after his assassination attempt in July. President Joe Biden ends his re-election campaign weeks later, forcing Harris to unite Democrats and consider potential running mates in an extremely compressed time frame.
Three people who confirmed the selection of Walz spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the matter has not been made public.
Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to lead a major party race, initially considered nearly a dozen candidates before settling on a handful of strong contenders, all of whom were white men. In landing Walz, she sided with a low-profile partner who has proven himself to be a champion of Democratic causes.
Walz, who has been a strong supporter of Harris during her campaign against Trump and Vance, called the Republican “weird” in an interview last month. Since then, Democrats have seized on the message and amplified it.
“Calling these people weirdos is not a slur,” Walz said during a fundraiser for Harris in Minneapolis on Monday. “It’s an observation.”
From football coach to governor
Walz grew up in the small town of West Point, Nebraska, and was a social studies teacher, football coach and union member at West Point High School in Mankato, Minnesota, before entering politics.
He won his first of six terms in Congress in 2006 in a largely rural district in southern Minnesota and used the position to champion veterans’ issues. Walz served in the Army National Guard for 24 years and was promoted to sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks in the military.
In 2018, he ran for governor on the theme of “One Minnesota” and won by more than 11 percentage points.
In his first term as governor, Walz must find ways to work with a divided Legislature with a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-led Senate. But Minnesota has a history of divided government, and the arrangement worked surprisingly well in his first year. But early in his second year in office, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Minnesota, and bipartisanship quickly fell apart.
Walz relied on emergency powers to lead the state’s response. Republicans are angry about restrictions such as lockdowns, closing schools and closing businesses. They retaliated by firing or ousting some of his agency heads. But Minnesotans stuck at home also got to know Walz better through his frequent afternoon briefings early in the crisis, which were broadcast and livestreamed across the state.
Walz won re-election in 2022, defeating his Republican challenger, physician and vaccine skeptic Dr. Scott Jensen, by nearly 8 percentage points. Not only did Walz win, Democrats retained control of the House and flipped the Senate, winning a “trifecta” of complete control of both chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in eight years. One important reason was the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which held that the Constitution did not include a right to abortion. This hurts Minnesota Republicans, especially suburban women.
“Tim was in the news because the country and the world saw someone we loved so dearly,” U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Monday.
Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, said young people he spoke to on the campaign trail were “seduced by the waltz.”
Walz and other Democrats have an ambitious agenda for the 2023 legislative session and a budget surplus of up to $17.6 billion to fund it. Their proudest accomplishments include sweeping protections for abortion rights, including the elimination of nearly all restrictions put in place by Republicans in previous years, including 24-hour waiting periods and parental consent requirements. They also enacted new transgender rights protections that would make the state a haven for families coming from out-of-state to receive treatment for transgender children.
Help with home and school lunches
Their other major accomplishments include tax credits for families with children, aimed at reducing child poverty, and universal free school breakfasts and lunches for all students, regardless of family income. They also created a paid family and medical leave program, legalized recreational marijuana for adults and made it easier to vote.
Walz also signed a bill banning so-called trash fees and presided over a statewide ban on worker non-compete agreements, both bills that check the Biden administration’s hesitation at the federal level. land-driven corporate power.
Republicans complain that Walz and his fellow Democrats are squandering a surplus that could be better used to provide permanent tax cuts for everyone. They also accuse the governor and his administration of lax oversight of pandemic response plans, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Federal prosecutors have charged 70 people with defrauding federal food programs that provided $250 million in funding for children’s meals under Walz’s watch. Known as the Feed Our Future scandal, it is one of the largest cases of pandemic aid fraud in the country. The Office of the Legislative Auditor, a nonpartisan watchdog group, issued a scathing report in June saying Walz’s Education Department “failed to act on warning signs,” failed to exercise its powers effectively and was unprepared to respond. .
Republicans remain critical of Walz’s response to the sometimes violent unrest in 2020 that followed the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, including the burning of a police station.
At a fundraiser in St. Paul in May, Trump reiterated his false claim that he was responsible for deploying the National Guard to quell violence. “The whole city was burned down. … Without me as president, there would be no Minneapolis today,” Trump said.
It was Walz who actually issued the order, which he issued at the request of the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. But in Minnesota, Republican lawmakers said both Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey were moving too slowly. Frey and Walz also exchanged blame over who was to blame for not starting the guard sooner.
Walz has served as a frequent Biden-Harris surrogate and has appeared increasingly frequently on national television. That included an interview on Fox News that so irritated Trump that he posted on the Truth social network, “They made me fight some battles that I shouldn’t have to fight.” Walz is also on Democratic National Convention rules Co-Chair of the Committee. He hosted a White House meeting between Democratic governors and Biden after the president’s poor performance in the debate with Trump.
Putting Walz on the ticket could help Democrats retain the state’s 10 electoral votes and build support for the party more broadly in the Midwest. No Republican has won a statewide race in Minnesota since Tim Pawlenty was reelected governor in 2006, but the 2022 Republican candidates for attorney general and state auditor are close.
In 2016, Trump trailed Democrat Hillary Clinton by just 1.5 percentage points in the state. He won the state last time and can win again.
Minnesota produced two vice presidents, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.
