Should Kamala Harris be elected president on November 5, her deputy would be Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota and a former schoolteacher, football coach and veteran.
Minnesota, which has voted for the Democrats in the past 12 presidential elections, isn’t a swing state, and it only has 10 votes in the Electoral College. But the Democratic Party hopes Walz can appeal to voters outside of his home state as well, particularly in the Midwest and in rural areas.
Walz enlisted in the National Guard after high school and served for 24 years. He also worked as a schoolteacher, abroad in China first and then back in the US, in the states of Nebraska and Minnesota, where he coached his high school’s football team to its first-ever state championship.
“He is not very well known nationally, but his background enables him to speak to a certain section of the electorate with credibility,” Filippo Trevisan, a political scientist at American University in Washington, DC, told DW.
Trevisan said the Harris campaign chose Walz to “reach out to voters they need in the rural parts of America.”
“Walz has called out Trump and Vance for not knowing the middle class,” Trevisan said, “whereas Walz is from the middle class.”
Political career with progressive successes
From 2007 to 2019, Walz represented his Minnesota district in the US House of Representatives, where he served as a ranking member on the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
In 2018, he won the election for governor of Minnesota. During his tenure, he spearheaded several progressive policy drives in his state, such as protecting abortion rights, legalizing recreational marijuana and providing free school meals to all kids.
Walz’s campaign zinger
Walz started the short race for Harris’ VP pick as somewhat of an underdog but made many media appearances in which he played up his rural roots — he and his three siblings were raised in the small town of Valentine, Nebraska — and everyman appeal.
He broke into the spotlight when he called the Republican ticket of former US President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance “weird” in an interview with the broadcaster MSNBC and at subsequent rallies. The label went viral and was taken up by the Harris campaign, which has used it in press releases and social media posts.
Walz has also said he believes that Republicans have destroyed rural America and divided working class people. The goal of the Harris/Walz ticket, he says, is to bring people together around values like strong public schools and affordable health care.
His “weird” jabs made an appearance in his sole debate against Vance. In a largely mild-mannered debate characterized by policy back-and-forths that have notably been absent from this campaign, Walz seemed to lack the Midwest charm he was tapped for against his slick Republican opponent.
And, of course, amid the spotlight that the campaign trail brings, his folksy dad-like demeanor was called on to defend several “misstatements” that cut into his credibility.
Walz had to wind back claims that he was in Hong Kong on the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre (he was actually in the US in June 1989 when it occurred); 2018 remarks that he carried “weapons of war” in conflict (he never served in a combat zone during his 24 years in the National Guard); and statements on the type of fertility treatments used when he and his wife were attempting to conceive: intrauterine insemination (IUI), not in-vitro fertilization (IVF) as he originally claimed.
“I will own up when I misspeak,” Walz has said. “I will own up when I make a mistake.”
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on August 6, 2024, and was updated on October 29, 2024, to reflect developments during the campaign.
Edited by: Martin Kuebler and Helen Whittle
