Who is Tim Walz? 5 things to know about Kamala Harris's choice for vice president. (2024)

Politics

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.

By STEVE KARNOWSKI and JOHN HANNA, Associated Press

August 6, 2024

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has decided on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in her bid for the White House. The 60-year-old Democrat and military veteran rose to the forefront with a series of plain-spoken television appearances in the days after President Joe Biden decided not to seek a second term. He has made his state a bastion of liberal policy and, this year, one of the few states toprotect fansbuying tickets online forTaylor Swiftconcerts and other live events.

Some things to know about Walz:

Walz comes from rural America

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.

He has a proven ability to connect with conservative voters

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. Onelast fallshowed them trying a Minnesota State Fair ride, “The Slingshot,” after they bantered about fair food and her being a vegetarian.

He could help the ticket in key Midwestern states

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 stays in the hands of Democrats.

That’s important because former President Donald Trump has portrayed Minnesotaas being in playthis year, even though the state hasn’t elected a Republican to statewide office since 2006. A GOP presidential candidate hasn’t carried the state since President Richard Nixon’s landslide in 1972, but Trump has alreadycampaigned there.

When Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton decided not to seek a third term in 2018, Walz campaigned and won the office on a “One Minnesota” theme.

Walz also 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.

He has experience with divided government

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 governmentstill 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 backand 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 themurder of George Floydby a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

Things got easier for Walz in his second term, after hedefeated Republican Scott Jensen, a physician known nationally as a vaccine skeptic. Democratsgained controlof both legislative chambers, clearing the way for a more liberal course in state government, aided by ahuge budget surplus.

Walz and lawmakerseliminated nearly allof the state abortion restrictions enacted in the past by Republicans,protected gender-affirming carefor transgender youth and legalizedthe recreational use of marijuana.

Rejecting Republican pleas that the state budget surplus be used to cut taxes, Democratsfunded free school mealsfor 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.

He 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 n 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 intoa themefor Harris and other Democrats, and has a chance to be a watchword of the undoubtably weird 2024 election.

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.

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