Who is Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ pick for vice president? Here’s what we know
Think of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and it’s impossible to escape the word “weird.”
Weird that someone from one of the nation’s most reliably Democratic states is on the presidential ticket. And “weird” being the Democratic catchphrase of the year so far, thanks to Walz.
He used the word last month during an MSNBC interview to describe Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance, and it has caught on among other Democrats.
Walz, who is Kamala Harris’ pick for vice president, brings to the Democratic ticket both a Midwestern folksiness but also an ability to twist rhetorical knives into opponents.
How much Walz will help Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee who is the sitting vice president, is uncertain.
Minnesota is probably not a state that needs help to vote Democratic. It last gave its electoral votes to a Republican in 1972. It is adjacent geographically to swing state Wisconsin, but that state’s political leanings have not reliably spilled into the other during the years.
He also doesn’t bring the sort of generational change that Vance, 39, adds to the GOP ticket. Walz is 60, six months older than Harris.
What he does bring, in addition to his style, is a command of issues. He’s the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, where he has been an outspoken critic of Republican policy. Progressives appreciate his championing of social-service reforms such as paid family leave.
“We have a saying in Minnesota: ‘If you do something good and talk about it, it no longer counts,’ ’’ Walz told Politico last year. In President Joe Biden’s case, “I think there was a slowness to talk about the things they did.”
Governor of Minnesota since 2019, Walz has been both a political insider and outsider.
He spent the early part of his adult life as a teacher in China, then in Nebraska, where he met his wife, and Minnesota. He helped coach a highschool football team in Mankato, Minn., in 1999 to the school’s first championship.
He spent 24 years in the Army National
Guard, retiring in 2005.
Walz then began his political career, winning a House seat in 2006 in a rural Minnesota district with strong Republican leanings. He nonetheless proved to be a reliable Democrat on abortion, labor, fiscal issues and other major policies.
As governor, Walz has generally stuck to those policies. He won his first term with 53% of the vote and his second term in 2022 with 52%. Supporters say that illustrates that he knows how to wage a tough political fight.