Vice President Kalama Harris yesterday named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Who is he – and what do voters think of him?
The “Veep” has selected her “Veep.” Yesterday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris, who, after a virtual roll call of delegates is now Democrats’ official choice to represent the party on the presidential ballot in November, chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota to be her running mate.
Walz emerged during a shotgun vetting process from a crowded field of contenders that included Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and Mark Kelly, a U.S. senator from Arizona.
Who is Tim Walz, why was he Vice President Harris’ ultimate choice, and what does polling say about how voters feel about this selection? Let’s take a look.
Who Is Tim Walz?
Tim Walz is a second-term governor of Minnesota who previously represented the state in the U.S. House of Representatives. As Politico explained, he is not a native of Minnesota, having been born in West Point, Neb. (current population: 3,500) and raised in Butte, Neb. Despite moving to the big city of Chadron, Neb. (current population: 5,223) to attend college, Walz can relate to small-town America. Of Butte, he has said, “I come from a town of 400 — 24 kids in a class, 12 cousins, farming, those types of things.” Walz’s wife, Gwen, is a Minnesota native and an educator who has taught in public schools and in prisons. The couple has two children.
Walz is a military veteran. He enlisted in the Army Reserves at 17 and eventually rose to the rank of command sergeant major before retiring in 2005. He served for a total of 24 years.
Prior to full-time enlistment in the U.S. Army, Walz taught high school in China for a year. He still speaks Mandarin. Walz also taught school on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. “I tell folks that managing a high-school lunchroom for years trained me for the craziness that can overtake Washington, D.C.,” he once said.
Walz is a relative newcomer to politics. His first political job was as a county coordinator for former Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Walz was also a district coordinator of Vets for Kerry. He was elected to Congress just two years later and became the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in the U.S. House. He defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht in that race despite being outspent by close to a half-million dollar margin, Politico noted. He won reelection five times, including in 2016 when Donald Trump won the presidential race in Walz’s district by 15 points.
In the U.S. House, Walz was known for his willingness to reach across the aisle. Indeed, the Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked him as the seventh-most bipartisan lawmaker during his last year in the lower chamber of Congress. Years later, Donald Trump appointed Walz to his bipartisan Council of Governors, which advises the president and Cabinet on policy matters. Walz voted to extend the Bush-era tax cuts in 2010 and again in 2012, when he was one of only 19 House Democrats to do so. He was one of only 17 House Democrats to vote to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing a subpoena pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, a scandal in which federal agents allowed more than 2,000 firearms to be sold illegally. (Ironically, former Attorney General Holder led the vetting process of vice presidential contenders for the Harris campaign.)
According to Politico, more than half of the bills Walz co-sponsored between 2015 and 2017 were introduced by Republicans or independents. Additionally, Walz once earned an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association and the group’s endorsement. Walz, an avid hunter, has scoffed at J.D. Vance for talking about guns when “I guarantee you he can’t shoot pheasants like I can.”
As the lead Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Walz focused on veterans’ mental health, suicide and pain management, and funding for medical cannabis treatment for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain.
When he first ran for Minnesota governor in 2018, Walz bested his Republican opponent by 11 points. He now serves as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
Why Did Harris Select Walz?
Minnesota is a dependably Democratic state. It last voted for a Republican for president in 1972 when Richard Nixon was the GOP’s nominee. Even when incumbent Republican President Ronald Reagan won in a landslide in 1984, Minnesotans chose to throw their weight behind the Democratic nominee. (Of course, that nominee, Walter Mondale, hailed from the state.) In a year where the electoral matchup is expected to be tight, why would Vice President Harris opt for Walz over someone like Gov. Josh Shapiro who comes from a toss-up state like Pennsylvania?
According to Politico, there are four main reasons Vice President Harris chose Walz.
First, unlike Vice President Harris herself, he has experience as a chief executive. Walz has been a governor for five years. He shepherded the state through the COVID-19 pandemic and has signed legislation enacting one of the largest child tax credits in the country. He also cut taxes on Social Security income. Walz has approved more progressive policies as well, including a universal free breakfast and lunch program at all public and charter schools, a bill to mandate the use of clean energy, a “red flag” law to prohibit people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others from owning guns, and an expansion of background checks for gun purchases to include private transactions.
More than half of Minnesota residents, 55 percent, told pollsters they approve of the job Walz has done as governor.
Second, Gov. Walz is considered a “regular guy” to whom most Americans can relate. In addition to his childhood in rural Nebraska, Politico noted he is “a former high school teacher, football coach, hunter and veteran who flipped a Republican-leaning House district in 2006 — which Harris believes will play well in the industrial Midwestern ‘Blue Wall’ states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.”
Third, Vice President Harris believes Walz is a plain-spoken messenger who can take on former President Donald Trump without seeming overly aggressive. “Walz is seen by Harris’ camp as a deft messenger, popularizing ‘weird’ as a messaging framework to describe former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. (R-Ohio) — a cutting and clear tagline that went viral over the last two weeks,” Politico explained.
Finally, Vice President Harris simply liked Walz more than any of the other contenders. “By contrast, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s team felt that his own interview with Harris did not go as well as it could have,” Politico reported. “There was ‘not a great feeling’ coming out of it, according to a person in touch with Shapiro’s advisers.” If you have watched HBO’s Veep you know that rapport matters not only on the campaign trail, of course, but when it comes to governing.
It also likely helped Walz’s odds that he has reportedly committed to having no ambition to run for president himself one day.
What Does Polling Say Walz Brings To The Ticket?
Vice President Harris’ Tuesday announcement of a running mate came as national polls have her creeping ahead of Donald Trump in the race for the White House. Is Walz the reason for that improvement?
It’s too early to say. Walz was named to the Democratic ticket less than 36 hours ago, so there are not yet any polls that gauge his impact on the race. There are several articles that have speculated about his potential to shape the outcome, however.
Looking at his most recent race for governor, The Associated Press concluded Walz could help the Democratic ticket regain support from key demographics that had been less than enthusiastic about a second Biden run. The wire service noted Walz “won young voters in Minnesota … and he did well in the state’s union households, winning nearly 6 in 10 voters in that group. And although he didn’t win among white voters without a college degree, he performed better among that group than Democrats nationwide.”
NBC News also examined Walz’s performance in blue-collar and small-town communities in his most recent race for governor and came to a different conclusion, however. It found he is no more popular than President Joe Biden in those areas, which could indicate Walz will not provide much of a boost in similar communities in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
What is clear is that Walz is a relative unknown. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found just 13 percent of Americans know enough about Walz to have an opinion of him. A slightly newer poll from NPR/Marist found a higher number, thirty percent, of voters knew enough to form an opinion of Walz. In contrast, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance was recognized by 41 percent of voters when Trump chose him to be his running mate in July.
While Newsweek acknowledged Walz is known by fewer Americans, the magazine also reported the governor is viewed more favorably than J.D. Vance.
Historian Allan Lichtman, who Newsweek says has an “impressive record predicting the outcome of most presidential elections since 1984,” also argued Walz is starting from a sound foundation. Lichtman said to win the hearts and minds of voters, vice presidential candidates must do one thing: show they have the experience to be president if they find themselves in the position to step into the role.
“[Walz] was a multiple term U.S. representative from a swing district … he twice won the governorship for Minnesota … He has legislative experience, he has executive experience, he has military experience having served 24 years in the national guard, he was a teacher,” Lichtman noted. “He’s very little known but his governing credentials are extremely strong.”
With less than 90 days to go until Election Day, watch for polls in the coming days and weeks that either confirm or rebuke that opinion.
