 "Who is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris' running mate for 2024 US presidential election?")
The suspense is finally over.
All eyes were on Vice-President Kamala Harris to see how she would make arguably the most difficult and high-profile decision of her campaign – choosing her running mate for November’s presidential election.
Now, we know.
Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be on her ticket.
Walz beat out a number of candidates including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
But what do we know about Walz?
Let’s take a closer look:
Early years
Walz, 60, is a former teacher and an-ex member of the US National Guard.
As per Forbes, Walz was born in Nebraska’s West Point.
As per CNN, Walz said he “grew up in a small town: 400 people, 24 kids in the class, 12 cousins.”
He graduated from the state’s Chadron State College.
Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was just 17, serving 24 years in domestic and overseas deployments.
He began his career as a teacher in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIt was here that he met his future wife Gwen – then a fellow teacher.
He taught in China’s Guangdong province around the time of the 1989 unrest in Tiananmen square.
In the mid-1990s he moved with his wife to Minnesota, her home state, where he taught high school and coached the school football team.
Political plunge
Walz first entered politics as part of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.
This, after some of his students were questioned for having a Kerry sticker when he took them to a campaign rally for then president George W Bush, according to MinnPost.
According to BBC, Walz served as a member of Congress for a dozen years.
He won the first of six terms in Congress in 2006 from a mostly rural southern Minnesota district, and used the office to champion veterans issues.
Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, rising to command sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks in the military.
Walz, who served in a Republican-leaning district, has proven appeal to rural and white voters. He displayed a conservative bent defending agricultural interests and backing gun rights.
“I think he was a solid Democratic member of the House with a few twists - focus on ag, farmers, rural areas,” Democratic strategist Jeff Blodgett told CNN.
“I think that he wanted to protect rifles and things of that nature as a rural congressman.”
Walz ran for governor in 2018 on the theme of “One Minnesota” and won by more than 11 points.
As governor, Walz had to find ways to work in his first term with a legislature that was split between a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-led Senate. Minnesota has a history of divided government, though, and the arrangement was surprisingly productive in his first year.
But the COVID-19 pandemic hit Minnesota early in his second year, and bipartisan cooperation soon frayed.
Walz relied on emergency powers to lead the state’s response. Republicans chafed under restrictions that included lockdowns, closing schools and shuttering businesses. They retaliated by firing or forcing out some of his agency heads.
But Minnesotans who were stuck at home also got to know Walz better through his frequent afternoon briefings in the early days of the crisis, which were broadcast and streamed statewide.
He championed a number of progressive initiatives as governor, such as free school meals, expanded paid worker leave, sweeping protections for abortion rights and generous aid to families.
Walz won re-election in 2022 by nearly 8 points over his GOP challenger, Dr Scott Jensen, a physician and vaccine skeptic. Not only did Walz win, Democrats kept control of the House and flipped the Senate to win the “trifecta” of full control of both chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in eight years.
A big reason was the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which held that the Constitution doesn’t include a right to abortion. That hurt Minnesota Republicans, especially among suburban women.
However, Walz fell out with the NRA over his decisions on gun safety as governor.
In May, Walz signed a bill last May expanding voting rights in Minnesota for 55,000 former prisoners.
‘Trump is weird’
The father of two has increased his profile recent weeks as an effective surrogate for the Harris campaign.
It was Walz who first began attacking Trump and Vance as “weird” – which went viral.
Democrats, including the Harris campaign, have increasingly embraced the line of attack.
Democratic strategist Raghu Devaguptapu, a former Democratic Governors Association political director told CNN Walz was a “real steady hand.”
“He’s not the most charismatic guy, but he’s a steady hand. He’s really thoughtful, very likeable. He’s done a really nice job of building a broad coalition of support. … That’s the center of strength around Tim Walz,” Devaguptapu added.
Representative Betty McCollum, a Democrat who is the longest-serving Minnesotan currently in Congress, described his style to The New York Times as “he will not twist an arm.”
“He will ask somebody what they need, what they’re missing or what the legislation is missing, and whether there is some way to get to yes.”
Walz is also a big supporter of unions – a key Demographic base.
Walz was at the helm when the George Floyd protests rocked the state.
He deployed the National Guard to regain control of the situation after the situation turned violent.
However, Republicans still criticise Walz for his response to the sometimes violent unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, which included the torching of a police station.
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. “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.
Interesting political pick
Walz is also an interesting political pick by Harris.
Though Minnesota is a reliably Democratic state, it is close to Wisconsin and Michigan.
These two battleground states could be crucial to the eventual winner.
Harris is clearly looking to 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.
Putting Walz on the ticket could help Democrats hold the state’s 10 electoral votes and bolster the party more broadly in the Midwest. No Republican has won a statewide race in Minnesota since Tim Pawlenty was re-elected governor in 2006, but GOP candidates for attorney general and state auditor came close in 2022.
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.
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.”
As per Forbes, Walz is the chair of the national Democratic Governors Association and the co-chair of the rules committee for the Democratic National Convention.
He led a White House meeting of Democratic governors chair of the national Democratic Governors Association with Biden following the president’s disastrous performance in his debate with Trump.
In landing on Walz, Harris has chosen a low-key partner who has proven himself as a champion for Democratic causes.
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.”
“How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in 100 days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come?” Walz asked during the White Dudes for Harris phonecall. “And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass, sent him on the road?”
Walz gave the nascent Harris campaign the new attack line in a late July interview: “These are weird people on the other side: They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room,” referring to book bans and women’s reproductive consultations with doctors.
As per CNN, Walz has also spoken about his and his wife Gwen’s struggles to conceive.
“My oldest daughter’s name is Hope. That’s because my wife and I spent seven years trying to get pregnant, needed fertility treatments, things like IVF – things (MAGA Republicans) would ban,” Walz said as per CNN. “These guys are the anti-freedoms.”
Walz has also attacked the claims by Trump and Vance of having middle class credentials.
“They keep talking about the middle class. A robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are? They don’t know who we are,” Walz said in an MSNBC interview.
‘Unicorn’
That approach has struck a chord with the young voters Harris needs to reengage. David Hogg, the co-founder of the gun safety group March for Our Lives, described him as a “great communicator.”
Walz is “somewhat of a unicorn,” said Ryan Dawkins, a political science professor at Minnesota’s Carleton College - a man born in a small town in rural Nebraska capable of conveying Harris’ message to core Democratic voters, and those that the party has failed to reach in recent years.
Dawkins praised his ability to connect with rural voters. It is a group the Biden administration has tried to reach with infrastructure spending and other pragmatic policies, but with little show of messaging success so far.
Walz’s shift from a centrist representing a single rural district in Congress to a more progressive politician as governor may have been in response to the demands of voters in major cities like Minneapolis-St. Paul. But it leaves him open to Republican attacks, Dawkins said in a telephone interview.
“He runs the risk of reinforcing some of the worst fears people have of Kamala Harris being a San Francisco liberal,” Dawkins said.
Walz has a ready counter-attack.
“What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn and women are making their own healthcare decisions,” Walz said in a July CNN interview.
“So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.”
The Harris campaign hopes Walz’s extensive National Guard career, coupled with a successful run as a high school football coach, and his Dad joke videos
Walz was a relative unknown nationally until the Harris “veepstakes” heated up, but his profile has since surged. A popular member of Congress, he reportedly had the backing of powerful former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was instrumental in persuading Biden to leave the race.
Minnesota has produced two vice presidents, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.
Harris became the Democratic Party’s standard bearer after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign last month. Since then, she has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and recast the race against Republican Donald Trump with a boost of energy from her party’s base.
Harris was expected to appear with her running mate at an event in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening.
With inputs from agencies
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