Why Walz?

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was filmed sitting on his covered porch in St. Paul while he accepted a call from Vice President Kamala Harris. Wearing a black T-shirt and camouflage hat, he signed on to join her presidential campaign.

Walz has the policy positions of a liberal Democrat with the style of a Midwestern dad. At a rally with Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Walz recalled his rural upbringing and the values of small-town life.

“I was born in West Point, Nebraska,” Walz told a cheering crowd of more than 10,000. “I lived in Butte, a small town of 400 where community was a way of life. Growing up, I spent the summers working on the family farm. My mom and dad taught us to show generosity toward your neighbors and to work for the common good,”

While Harris, who is from California, has been criticized as a coastal elite, Walz embraces rural politics, highlighting agriculture and veterans issues. A well-known photo shows him grinning while holding a piglet at the state fair.

He spent 24 years in the Army National Guard as a noncommissioned officer, rising to command sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks in the military. At the same time, he taught social studies and geography at Mankato West High School in southern Minnesota and coached the football team. His range of experience likely pulled him to the top of the list, said Christopher Devine, a University of Dayton political science professor. Devine co-authored a book on vice presidents earlier this year and noted similarities between Walz and former Vice President Mike Pence.

“They were both serving as governors at the time of their selection. Walz had previously served for more than a decade in Congress, again, just like Mike Pence. It’s unique among the six finalists that he has state and federal experience,” Devine said. “He has experience as an executive, which Kamala Harris apparently was looking for.”

President Donald Trump’s campaign has labeled Walz as a “dangerously liberal extremist.” Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, criticized Walz’s handling of anti-police riots in Minneapolis in 2020 after the death of George Floyd. Still, Vance said, the Harris-Walz pairing makes sense.

“Tim Walz, his record is a joke,” Vance told reporters on a campaign plane after a rally in Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon. “He’s been one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government at any level. I think what it says is that Kamala Harris is running as a San Francisco liberal. She has governed as a San Francisco liberal, and she’s chosen a running mate who will be a San Francisco–style liberal.”

In 2018, Walz ran for governor with the slogan “One Minnesota.” With a divided state legislature, he promised to work with both chambers, but his record has been largely liberal. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit during his first term, Walz quickly shut down the state’s schools and businesses. He instituted an indoor mask mandate and set up a hotline for Minnesotans to report neighbors in violation of pandemic policies. Last year, he signed into law a package of bills that established rights to abortion and medical attempts to change one’s sex traits.

Walz legalized recreational marijuana in Minnesota. As a congressman, he had an A-plus rating from the National Rifle Association, but he changed his position after a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. Last year, he signed a law establishing red flag laws in his state as well as universal background checks. He also signed a bill to allow 55,000 felons on probation to vote. Under his governorship, Minnesota has become a haven for people seeking puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries, including children.

Walz is a former member of the National Education Association and is popular with unions. As governor, he signed off on several union-supported laws and showed up at picket lines. He also won the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-described democratic socialist. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., praised Walz’s addition to the ticket on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“Tim Walz is wonderful,” Pelosi said. “To characterize him as left is so unreal. He’s right down the middle. He’s a heartland-of-America Democrat. And he was chair of our Veterans Affairs Committee, and I don’t want anyone to forget that. … He brings the security credential. He brings the rural credential, and he will do well in rural America.”

Walz has less name recognition than some other candidates on the shortlist, but his personality is earning him support. During an MSNBC interview last month, he said that Trump and Vance “are just weird.” That sparked a new theme for the campaign that Harris herself adopted.

“As soon as I saw Tim Walz say that Trump and Vance were weird, I thought, this guy just might get picked,” Al Cross, a Kentucky political commentator, told WORLD. “Because in politics today, labels are important, and he found a way to use a somewhat derogatory label but not one that was really offensive, and it really seemed to take off.”

Cross said Walz holds policy positions similar to Harris’, but his demeanor and background could help him relate to a population that no longer supports the Democratic Party.

“I think that he brings a good deal to the ticket in terms of the ability to help win Wisconsin and Michigan but also to speak to those millions of rural voters who have largely abandoned the Democratic Party,” Cross said. “He’s pretty liberal as governors go, but I think he has a sense of just how much conservative voters will accept just how far you can really go with policies that won’t produce a backlash against you. He was reelected in Minnesota, and that’s a pretty good testimony to his ability to read the electorate.”

Walz’s history of winning tough races appeals to the Democratic Party. But vice presidential candidates rarely make a difference in the number of Electoral College votes a candidate earns, and Walz did not make a grand sweep in his last election. In 2022, he won most young voters and union supporters. He also outperformed most other Democrats running for office. But he struggled with white men and military veteran households, according to AP VoteCast. As of last month, just over half of Minnesota voters had a favorable view of Walz, according to a Morning Consult poll.

“I think that after the convention, Harris and Walz will be leading in the polls,” Cross said. “And it will remain a close race to be decided by these battleground states. Pennsylvania will get even more attention now that the governor there was not picked for the ticket. I give the edge to the Democrats at this point, but it’s still very close.”