The Vice President of the United States and candidate Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate in the November 5 election. “As a governor, coach, teacher and veteran, he has given his all for working families like his. It’s great to have him on the team,” she said. written Harris on X. “It’s an immense honor to join Kamala Harris on this campaign. I’m in,” he said. answered Walz still on X. “Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a little of the first day of school. So let’s get to it.”
A National Guard veteran, former teacher and high school football coach, the 60-year-old is currently serving his second term as governor of Minnesota, which he has led since 2018, and has chaired the Democratic Governors Association since last year. He previously served 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, winning multiple reelections in a traditionally Republican district starting in 2006.
Considered a reliable, energetic and rhetorical ally, Tim Walz was among the first to endorse Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate after Joe Biden gave up a second term, despite his staunch defense of the president after his disastrous first debate against Donald Trump.
The Minnesota governor has since become known for his oratory skills and attacks on Republican opponents, calling the ticket of Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance a duo of “weird guys,” a statement that has become a viral meme among Democrats.
The choice of Tim Walz, however, testifies above all to Kamala Harris’ attention for the states of the so-called “blue wall” of the Midwest, the heart of America inhabited mostly by white voters from rural areas, which a champion of progressive politics and outspoken speaker like the governor of Minnesota should ideally help her conquer. Also thanks to a very colorful rhetoric.
At a recent fundraiser called “White Dudes for Harris,” Tim Walz took a direct swipe at former President Donald Trump. “How many times in 100 days do you change the trajectory of the world? How many times in 100 days do you do something that will impact generations to come?” the Minnesota governor asked, recalling the path that led Democrats to switch candidates mid-race, betting on the vice president. “And how many times in the world can you say you gave that bastard a wake-up call, knowing that a black woman kicked his ass?!”
Origins and the Walz family
Timothy James Walz was born on April 6, 1964, in West Point, Nebraska, but grew up with his three brothers and sisters first in Valentine and then in Butte, where his father died of lung cancer before he was 20. “I grew up in a small town of 400 people,” he once recalled at a rally. “There were 24 of us in the class, 12 of us were cousins.”
A biographical trait in common with Donald Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, recently attacked by Walz himself regarding the alleged demands of Midwesterners, which according to Republicans would be embodied by the senator from Ohio. “There’s a golden rule in a small town, for those of you who aren’t small towns: Mind your own business,” Walz said in late July during a fundraiser. “We don’t need them. I don’t know who’s asking for this crazy stuff that (the Republicans, ed.) are pushing. Who’s asking for a ban on birth control? Who’s asking for an increase in the price of insulin?”
Enlisting in the National Guard at the age of 17 in 1981, Tim Walz served nearly 24 years in the military. After graduating from high school, he earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from Chadron State College in Nebraska in 1989, and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Minnesota State University in Mankato in 2001.
In the early 1990s, he taught for a year in China for the NGO WorldTeach. Once back in the US, he accepted a job as a high school teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met his future wife Gwen, whom he married in 1994 and with whom he moved two years later to Mankato, Minnesota, the home state of the mother of his two children.
Tim Walz’s family history is one of his most unique traits, due to the couple’s infertility issues. “My oldest daughter’s name is Hope. That’s because my wife spent seven years trying to get pregnant. But we ended up needing fertility treatments, things like in vitro fertilization, things that[Republicans, ed.]would prohibit,” Walz said at a recent rally for Kamala Harris. “These kids are anti-freedom.”
As a centrist MP…
Yet in more than a decade as a congressman, Tim Walz has often played the role of a centrist politician. While he supported same-sex marriage and abortion rights, he took relatively conservative positions on guns, which earned him early favor from the National Rifle Association, the industry’s main lobby. But Walz lost that support shortly after being elected governor of Minnesota, when he pushed through a series of gun restrictions in the name of safety.
“I think he was a solid House Democrat with a little bit of a twist: He focused on agriculture, farmers and rural areas,” he said. said of him to the CNN Democratic strategist Jeff Blodgett, a longtime aide to the late Sen. Paul Wellstone. “I think he wanted to protect guns and that sort of thing as a ‘rural’ member of Congress.”
This has ensured him six times (2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016) the victory of his seat in the traditionally Republican first district of Minnesota, with a consensus almost always (five times out of six) above 50 percent. A success that in 2018 allowed him to win first the race in the primary for the candidate for governor of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, as the Democratic party is known in Minnesota, and then the elections for the highest seat in the state, conquered with over 53.8 percent of the vote. A triumph confirmed four years later with a percentage above 52 percent.
…to a progressive governor
As governor, he demonstrated his political prowess in Saint Paul. During his first term, Tim Walz had to deal with a slim majority in the state’s bicameral legislature. But his reforms and the electoral consensus consolidated by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party with his reelection in 2022 allowed Democrats to win control of both the local House and Senate, allowing them to pass a series of new measures that proved very popular.
First, Tim Walz has launched a series of social welfare programs, such as free lunches for public school students, greater access to the federal health care program Medicaid, additional protections for unionized workers and extended paid family leave for medical reasons. But that’s not all.
Minnesota Democrats have also passed a law protecting abortion rights, legalized marijuana, ratified new laws limiting the right to bear arms, and increased protections for transgender people. A program praised first and foremost by former President Barack Obama, who in May last year he tweeted: “If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, look at what’s happening in Minnesota.”
“There’s no place like Minnesota right now,” Walz echoed in his latest State of the Union address. “Together, we’re not just showing the people of Minnesota what we can do in terms of keeping our promises. We’re showing the entire American people the promise of that progressive vision that so many people support.” A promise he’s now committed to keeping as Kamala Harris’s running mate.
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