Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during a visit to the Cummins Power Generation Facility in Fridley, Minn., in April 2023.
Carolyn Kaster/AP file
WASHINGTON — Tim Walz, the two-term Minnesota governor expected to be named Monday as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, is a military veteran and union supporter who helped enact an ambitious Democratic agenda for his state, including sweeping protections for abortion rights and generous aid to families.
The selection of Walz has not been publicly announced but was confirmed to the Associated Press by three people familiar with the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity..
Walz could shore up her campaign’s standing across the upper Midwest, a critical region in presidential politics that often serves as a buffer for Democrats seeking the White House. The party remains haunted by Republican Donald Trump’s wins in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016. Trump lost those states in 2020 but has zeroed in on them as he aims to return to the presidency this year and is expanding his focus to Minnesota.
Walz, 60, is joining Harris during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American politics, promising an unpredictable campaign ahead. Republicans have rallied around Trump after his attempted assassination in July. Just weeks later, President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, forcing Harris to unify Democrats and consider potential running mates during an exceedingly compressed time frame.
Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to lead a major party ticket, initially considered nearly a dozen candidates before zeroing in on a handful of serious contenders, all of whom were white men. In landing on Walz, she sided with a low-key partner who has proven himself as a champion for Democratic causes.
Walz has served often as a Biden-Harris surrogate, and has made increasingly frequent appearances on national television. They’ve included an interview on Fox News that irritated Trump so much that he posted on Truth Social, “They make me fight battles I shouldn’t have to fight.” Walz is also co-chair of the rules committee for the Democratic National Convention. And he led a White House meeting of Democratic governors with Biden following the president’s disastrous performance in his debate with Trump.
“Tim has been in the news because the country and the world is seeing the guy we love so much,” U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar Klobuchar said Monday.
Walz has been a strong public advocate for Harris in her campaign against Trump and Vance, and has an ear for sound-bite politics.
Walz called Republican nominee Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance “just weird” in an MSNBC interview last month and the Democratic Governors Association — which Walz chairs — amplified the point in a post on X.
Walz later reiterated the characterization on CNN, citing Trump’s repeated mentions of the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.
The word quickly morphed into a theme for Harris and other Democrats, and has a chance to be a watchword of the undoubtably weird 2024 election.
During a fundraiser for Harris on Monday in Minneapolis, Walz said: “It wasn’t a slur to call these guys weird. It was an observation.”
It would be hard to find a more vivid representative of the American heartland than Walz. Born in West Point, Nebraska, a community of about 3,500 people northwest of Omaha, Walz joined the Army National Guard and became a teacher in Nebraska.
He and his wife moved to Mankato in southern Minnesota in the 1990s. That’s where he taught social studies and coached football at Mankato West High School, including for the 1999 team that won the first of the school’s four state championships. He still points to his union membership there.
Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring from a field artillery battalion in 2005 as a command sergeant major, one of the military’s highest enlisted ranks.
In his first race for Congress, Walz upset a Republican incumbent. That was in 2006, when he won in a largely rural, southern Minnesota congressional district against six-term Rep. Gil Gutknecht. Walz capitalized on voter anger with then-President George W. Bush and the Iraq war.
During six terms in the U.S. House, Walz championed veterans’ issues.
He’s also shown a down-to-earth side, partly through social media video posts with his daughter, Hope. One last fall showed them trying a Minnesota State Fair ride, “The Slingshot,” after they bantered about fair food and her being a vegetarian.
While Walz isn’t from one of the crucial “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where both sides believe they need to win, he’s right next door. He also could ensure that Minnesota, with its 10 electoral votes, stays in the hands of Democrats, while also bolstering the party more broadly in the Midwest.
Trump finished just 1.5 percentage points behind Democrat Hillary Clinton in the state in 2016. While Biden carried Minnesota by more than 7 points in 2020, Trump has taken to falsely claiming that he won the state last time and can do it again.
That’s important because Trump has portrayed Minnesota as being in play this year, even though the state hasn’t elected a Republican to statewide office since Tim Pawlenty was re-elected governor in 2006. GOP candidates for attorney general and state auditor did, however, come close in 2022.
A GOP presidential candidate hasn’t carried the state since President Richard Nixon’s landslide in 1972, but Trump has already campaigned there.
When Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton decided not to seek a third term in 2018, Walz campaigned on a “One Minnesota” theme, winning by more than 11 points. If the Harris-Walz ticket wins in November, Walz would become the third vice president from Minnesota, joining Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.
Walz speaks comfortably about issues that matter to voters in the Rust Belt. He’s been a champion of Democratic causes, including union organizing, workers’ rights and a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
In his first term as governor, Walz faced a Legislature split between a Democratic-led House and a Republican-controlled Senate that resisted his proposals to use higher taxes to boost money for schools, health care and roads. But he and lawmakers brokered compromises that made the state’s divided government still seem productive.
Bipartisan cooperation became tougher during his second year as he used the governor’s emergency power during the COVID-19 pandemic to shutter businesses and close schools. Republicans pushed back and forced out some agency heads. Republicans also remain critical of Walz over what they see as his slow response to sometimes violent unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
Things got easier for Walz in his second term, after he defeated Republican Scott Jensen, a physician known nationally as a vaccine skeptic. Democrats gained control of both legislative chambers, clearing the way for a more liberal course in state government, aided by a huge budget surplus.
Walz and lawmakers eliminated nearly all of the state abortion restrictions enacted in the past by Republicans, protected gender-affirming care for transgender youth and legalized the recreational use of marijuana.
Rejecting Republican pleas that the state budget surplus be used to cut taxes, Democrats funded free school meals for children, free tuition at public colleges for students in families earning under $80,000 a year, a paid family and medical leave program and health insurance coverage regardless of a person’s immigration status.
During a May fundraiser in St. Paul, Trump repeated his false claim that he was responsible for deploying the National Guard to quell the violence during civil unrest after the Floyd’s murder.
“The entire city was burning down. . If you didn’t have me as president, you wouldn’t have Minneapolis today,” Trump said.
It was actually Walz who gave the order, which he issued in response to requests from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. But within Minnesota, GOP legislators said both Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey were too slow to act. And there was finger-pointing between Frey and Walz on who was responsible for not activating the Guard faster.
