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      Tim Walz’s Rise in the Democratic Party Was No Accident

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      More than a year ago, Tim Walz and his aides decided to be ready in case an irresistible opportunity arose. Their tightly held strategy helped them catch political lightning in a bottle.Shortly after the 2022 midterms, the political map seemed set: President Biden would be the Democratic nominee in 2024, with Vice President Kamala Harris by his side.But up in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz had just led his party to sweeping victories and wondered about the possibility of a different future — one where his Midwestern brand might be needed for a national role, perhaps even on a presidential ticket.So the plain-spoken Mr. Walz and his aides crafted a strategy to inject him into the national political conversation, according to a person involved in the discussions who insisted on anonymity to reveal Mr. Walz’s thinking. They would build his profile, one state party dinner and cable news appearance at a time. And few Democratic politicians, officials or members of the party faithful would see them coming because they would do it in a way that was, above all, Minnesota Nice.Their plan exploded into the public consciousness over a turbulent two weeks. Mr. Walz transformed from a little-known governor of a blue state to one of his party’s most prominent and powerful messengers. His approach, combined with a heavy dose of luck, helped him win the coveted vice-presidential nomination over rising stars from battleground states and liberal favorites.Mr. Walz achieved what his team had worked for 18 months to accomplish: He went viral. As his standing rose, he remained unfailingly loyal, humble and optimistic about the future in his interviews behind closed doors with Ms. Harris and her team.But underneath that veneer of Midwestern politeness, Mr. Walz had angled to improve his political prospects. In early 2023, his political staff began a concerted effort to hone his message and shine a light on his accomplishments. Aides pitched him relentlessly to podcasters, reporters, donors and activists. That summer, his team branded his progressive legislation “the Minnesota Miracle.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz inspire enthusiasm at Wisconsin rally: ‘I’m elated’

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      Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, continued their swing-state tour with a rally in rural Wisconsin on Wednesday.The rally, which followed a raucous event in Philadelphia, served as an opportunity for Harris to continue to introduce Walz, a formerly low-profile midwest governor, to Democrats in the critical swing state. Held in Eau Claire, a north-western Wisconsin city less than two hours from Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota, the rally drew attendees from both states.Walz spoke first, focusing on his midwestern background and noting he had family in the crowd. “Being a midwesterner, I know something about commitment to the people,” he said.He also spoke at length about his experience coaching football, teaching social studies and serving in the Minnesota National Guard, underscoring his role as a kind of ambassador to rural and working-class Americans for the Democratic party.And he directly took on Trump. “Don’t believe him when he plays dumb. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. He knows exactly what Project 2025 will do in restricting and taking our freedoms. He knows that it rigs the economy for the super rich if he gets a chance to go back to the White House. It will be far worse than it was four years ago.”Walz also revisited his support for and personal experience with IVF, the fertility treatment, which has become a contentious issue for Republicans after an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos have personhood.The rally highlighted Harris’s focus on Wisconsin, where she held her first rally after Joe Biden announced the end of his bid for re-election. In 2016, Donald Trump won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes, and Biden won the state in 2020 by a similar margin.Harris’s speech was similar to those at other recent campaign stops, with a focus on the future and Trump’s threat to democratic norms.“Donald Trump has openly vowed, if re-elected, he will be a dictator on day one, that he would weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, that he would round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country, and even, quote, ‘terminate the United States constitution’,” she said.“Let us be clear, someone who suggests we should terminate the constitution of the United States should never again have a chance to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States.”Rallygoers were enthusiastic at seeing the duo at the event.“I’m elated,” said Lori Schlecht, a teacher from Minnesota who said she is excited about Walz given his background in public education – Walz was a public school teacher before he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2006. “Minnesota is blessed to have him, and I’m glad to see him at the national level. He is authentic and real – he’ll get shit done.”Many Minnesota residents in attendance pointed to Walz’s down-to-earth manner as an asset for the Democratic party ticket.“Walz is my homeboy,” said Colin Mgam, who is 65 and retired and drove from St Paul for the rally. “He brings straight talk, and he’s going to do well,” Mgam added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe indie folk band Bon Iver, whose lead singer is from Eau Claire and previously supported Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, opened for Harris at the Wednesday event.Walz, who was not initially an obvious contender for Harris’s vice-presidential pick, garnered widespread attention within the party after giving a candid and upbeat interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe in which he boosted Harris and wrote off Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance as “weird”.The “weird” moment went viral, and Democratic party officials and politicians quickly seized on the term to dismiss the Republican presidential ticket as reactionary and out-of-touch with everyday Americans.Walz’s comments – and subsequent references to the “weirdness” of the Maga movement, including at the Wednesday rally – marked the beginning of a rhetorical shift for Democrats, with Harris reframing the election in more positive terms than the Biden campaign, which leaned heavily on grave warnings about Trump’s autocratic tendencies. Since ascending to the top of the ticket, Harris has instead emphasized a policy agenda with issues that are popular among Democratic voters, such as abortion rights, labor unions and the cost of childcare.Donald Trump has been quick to paint Walz, who has worked with progressive lawmakers in Minnesota to pass a raft of progressive laws – codifying the right to abortion, expanding protections for workers and establishing landmark voting rights legislation – as a member of the “radical left”, a line of attack that the former president will likely continue to push.But Walz pushed back against Trump on Wednesday. “This election is all about asking that question, which direction will this country go in? Donald Trump knows the direction he wants to take it. He wants to take us back.” More

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      The coach v the couch: key takeaways from the first Harris-Walz rally

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      Kamala Harris introduced her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, to supporters at a packed, energetic rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.The event, which kicks off a week-long tour through the most politically competitive US states, marks a new chapter for the Harris campaign after securing enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee.Here’s what you need to know:Harris sought to define Walz foremost as a teacher, veteran and football coachHarris called Walz the “kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having”. She told a story about him agreeing to lead his school’s gay-straight alliance, knowing “the signal it would send to have a football coach get involved”.Harris also spoke of his skills as a marksman and his views on the second amendment. And finally, she talked at length about Walz’s time in the army national guard and his service to the country.Walz focused on a unifying, future-focused messageWalz, who like Harris is known for his smile, started his speech by saying: “Thank you for the trust you put in me, but more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.” He then spoke about growing up in the “heartland”, respecting neighbors, and his family of educators, attempting to differentiate the ticket from Donald Trump and JD Vance’s focus on mass deportation and crime.“If Donald Trump and JD Vance are irritated that Kamala Harris smiles and laughs, they’re really going to be irritated by Tim Walz,” Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of Minnesota’s house of representatives, told the Guardian.’Mind your own damn business’: Walz attacked the Trump-Vance ticket with a focus on reproductive rights and other freedomsWalz talked about his daughter Hope, who often appears in videos and photographs with her father, being born through IVF, and Republican attacks on contraception and abortion. Abortion opponents have been increasingly pushing for broader measures that would give rights and protections to embryos and fetuses, which could have big implications for fertility treatments.He also spoke about gun control, a tenet of the Harris campaign, saying he supported the second amendment but that children should have the freedom to go to school without the concern of school shootings.Walz made a direct hit at Project 2025, the conservative manifesto created by Trump allies and advisers. “Don’t believe him when he plays dumb,” he said of the former president. “He knows exactly what Project 2025 will to do restrict our freedoms.”He encapsulated his idea in another sticky colloquialism to counter Republicans hoping to intervene in medical practices and schools: “Mind your own damn business.”Josh Shapiro, who had been a vice-presidential contender, still made his markThe Pennsylvania governor who was also in the final running to be Harris’s running mate, spoke before Harris and Walz. His pitch-perfect and fiery speech helped set the tone for the rally, and he threw his support behind the newly announced ticket.Shapiro and Walz’s speeches also made the distinction between the two politicians clear. Shapiro has been described as Obama-like in his polished and forceful delivery. Meanwhile, Walz, whose speech spanned dad jokes and pointed attacks on his opponents, seasoned his remarks with midwestern dialect, adding a “damn well” here and a “come on” there. “Say it with me! We are not going back,” he said, starting a chant from the audience. “We’ve got 91 days. My god, that’s easy,” he said. “We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”The couch joke was madeWalz said his GOP rival, Trump’s running mate JD Vance, and Trump “are creepy and yes, they’re weird as hell”. He added that he “can’t wait to debate the guy”, speaking of Vance. Then, to sustained cheers and laughter, he made a reference to the baseless, but much-shared claim, that Vance admitted to having sex with a couch in his memoir. “That is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up”.Stumping earlier today in Pennsylvania, Vance said: “I absolutely want to debate Tim Walz,” but not until after the Democratic convention, he said, because of the sudden change in the Democratic ticket. More

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      in US Politics

      Tim Walz: charismatic running mate to help Harris make case against Trump

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      As Democrats weathered the upheaval caused by Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election campaign and hand the reins to his vice-president, Kamala Harris, a party stalwart piped up with a suggestion: start calling Donald Trump “weird”.The pioneer of the attack, which was also deployed by Harris’s campaign, was Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who insisted to CNN that “it’s not a name-calling or tagging him with it. It’s an observation.”“And I didn’t come up with it,” he added, noting that he had heard “relatives and Republicans” use the adjective to describe the former president.Walz is now expected to spend the next three months telling the country all about the weirdness of Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, after Harris named the Minnesota governor as her pick for vice-president on Tuesday. Although the 60-year-old is one of the least nationally known of the options Harris was considering, and does not hail from a state viewed as crucial to deciding the election, he is expected to assist Harris in making the case for her policies, and convincing voters to reject the extreme remaking of the US government that Trump says is required.Now in his second term as governor, the former congressman and high school teacher brings to the ticket a record of progressive policymaking, a somewhat sympathetic view towards pro-Palestine protesters, and a distinctly Minnesotan style of communication the campaign could use in its efforts to win the nearby swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.“If Donald Trump and JD Vance are irritated that Kamala Harris smiles and laughs, they’re really going to be irritated by Tim Walz,” Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of Minnesota’s house of representatives, told the Guardian.“He is a cheerful person, he’s a positive, upbeat person, he’s charismatic. He can get a crowd going.”Walz emerged as Harris’s pick after a search lasting two weeks that saw the vice-president also consider a group that included Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Arizona senator Mark Kelly. The choice of Walz drew praise from across the Democratic party’s ideological spectrum.Progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Harris made an “excellent decision”, while Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who recently left the party and is best known for hamstringing Biden’s proposals to fight child poverty and more aggressively combat climate change, said: “I can think of no one better than governor Walz to help bring our country closer together and bring balance back to the Democratic party.”Republicans responded to Walz’s selection by posting on social media images of the protests the rocked Minneapolis four years ago after George Floyd’s murder, reminders of the governor’s support for a law allowing undocumented migrants to obtain driver’s licenses, plus a massive Covid relief scandal that took place during his administration.With Trump making fears of crime and unrest a centerpiece of his platform, Amy Koch, a Minnesota Republican strategist and former state senate majority leader, said the unrest that followed Floyd’s killing will likely form a plank of the party’s counter-attack to Walz’s candidacy.“There’s a lot of video of five days of chaos in Minneapolis,” Koch told the Guardian. “There’s a lot of video of, like, literally, reporters covering it, saying: where is governor Walz?” The governor did deploy the national guard, but Republicans say he did not do so soon enough.Walz’s main competitor for the spot of running mate was Shapiro, who may have reignited tensions among Democrats over his policy positions on issues such as education, fracking and Israel-Gaza.Biden’s support for Benjamin Netanyahu and the invasion of Gaza sparked a backlash that some of his allies feared could have cost him victory in swing states such as Michigan, home to a large Arab-American population. Some pro-Palestine activists have signaled a willingness to give Harris a chance to win back their votes, but were wary of Shapiro, who took a hardline stance against pro-Palestinian protests.The backlash to his potential candidacy, which included the formation of a group called “No Genocide Josh”, itself attracted claims of antisemitism, with many pointing out that Shapiro, who is Jewish, has condemned Netanyahu and that Walz has a similar record of support for Israel and campus protests.Walz took a different rhetorical tack on other protests. When tens of thousands of Minnesotans voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary in protest against the Biden administration’s policies towards Gaza, his response was warm, with the governor calling them “civically engaged”.“They are asking to be heard and that’s what they should be doing,” Walz said at the time. “Their message is clear that they think this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more. And I think the president is hearing that.”After his selection, the pro-Palestine group IfNotNow said it remained “concerned” by Walz’s past association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and votes in Congress to approve military aid to the Israel.Supporters of Shapiro had argued that putting him on the ticket would help Harris win Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial swing state this election. But Christopher J Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton, said his research showed there was no guarantee of that happening.The choice of running mate was the last major piece of unfinished business before Harris, who quickly consolidated the support necessary to become the presumptive Democratic nominee after Biden withdrew last month.As hotly anticipated as Harris’s decision was, Devine said it was unlikely to prove decisive in beating Trump and Vance.“VPs can have an effect on the election. It’s not always in the way we expect, and the magnitude of that effect tends not to be very large,” said Devine, the author of Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections.If elected, Harris would be the first female president and the first south Asian president, and only the second African American, after Barack Obama. Her shortlist of running mates was composed entirely of white men after the Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer said she was not interested in the job.While Devine said that may have been a calculation on Harris’s part – besides Obama, every US president has been a white man – he said it did not mean she had no choice but to select a running mate from that demographic.“Kamala Harris could have chosen Gretchen Whitmer if she believed that there was strength in that identity of being a woman running for the presidency,” he said. “But I suspect her calculation, or a lot of her team, they might have weighed on her to … say that it just can’t be done. It’s too much for people to handle.”Trump has made dissatisfaction with both the Biden administration and the country’s entire direction a theme of his campaign, going so far as to say that the country is being “destroyed”. William G Howell, director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government, said Walz will be put in a position to articulate the case against that worldview.“His is the language of us coming together and … setting to work on hard problems,” Howell said. “And so, both in tone and in substance, he’s going to be able to clearly distinguish himself from from the kind of rhetoric emanating from Trump.” More

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      Kamala Harris bets on Tim Walz as running mate: ‘We are going to win’

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      Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for US president, has named Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate ahead of the November election.The decision ends intense speculation over which candidate Harris would pick to go up against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, and his choice for vice-president, the Ohio senator JD Vance.Walz first ran for office in 2006 in a Republican-leaning congressional district, upsetting the incumbent. He kept the seat until he won the Minnesota governorship in 2018, then again in 2022. Under his leadership, the state has seen significant progressive legislative wins in recent years, including universal school meals, legalized marijuana, abortion protections and gun control measures.Before he entered public office, he was a school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota, teaching geography to high school students. He also served in the army national guard for 24 years.In an Instagram post announcing the pick, Harris said: “One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep. It’s personal.”She cited his upbringing in Nebraska, and how after his father’s death to cancer, his family relied on social security survivor benefits to make ends meet. He used the GI bill to attend college. He coached high school football and advised the high school’s gay-straight alliance. His background is “impressive in its own right”, but also informs his governing, she said.Minnesota Democrats’ legislative record played into her choice – she noted a law that constitutionally protects access to abortion and one requiring universal background checks for gun purchases.“But what impressed me most about Tim is his deep commitment to his family,” she added.“We are going to build a great partnership. We are going to build a great team. We are going to win this election.”Walz posted a short statement to X on Tuesday. “Vice-President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school,” he said.His midwesterner dad charm and straight-talk propelled him up the list as a potential vice-presidential pick, though, and as the head of the Democratic Governors Association, he has been stumping for Biden and Harris for the past year.It was his simple retort against Trump and his allies that caught national Democrats’ attention most: he called them weird. His clips on TV shows went viral, showing him pushing back on Republicans’ “weird behavior” while showcasing a list of what he had accomplished as a Democratic governor and how Democrats would govern if they win the White House again.Walz explained in a TV interview why he had started calling Trump weird. It’s true that Trump’s policy would put women’s lives on the line and that he’s a threat to constitutional values, Walz said. But he’s also on the campaign trail “talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind”.“Have you ever seen the guy laugh? That seems very weird to me, that an adult can go through six and a half years of being in the public eye. If he has laughed, it’s at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior,” Walz said of Trump.Walz grew up in small-town Nebraska, giving him rural bona fides that will help voters who have moved away from Democrats in recent years.“The golden rule that makes small towns work so we’re not at each others’ throats all the time in a little town is: mind your own damn business,” Walz said in one TV spot.His former colleagues praised his ability to connect with those crucial voters in the Rust belt, and to not only explain what’s bad about Republicans, but what Democrats would actually do in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTim Ryan, a former Democratic US representative and Walz’s friend, called to mind a recent clip in which Walz mentioned that Minnesota ranked in the top three for happiest states in the nation. “Isn’t that really the goal here? For some joy? When he mentioned that I was like, dang man, that’s really good. That’s really good, because it gets us out of the political space and into the human being space.”Some political commentators had suggested that, as the first woman of color nominated by a major party, Harris was mostly likely to pick a white man to balance the ticket.The 59-year-old former California senator is looking to build on a successful campaign launch after stepping in to replace Joe Biden, who bowed to pressure from Democratic colleagues and dropped out of the race after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.Harris and Walz can expect a rapturous welcome at the Democratic national convention in Chicago starting on 19 August. She has been endorsed by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.A New York Times/Siena College national opinion poll published on 25 July found that Harris has narrowed what had been a sizable Trump lead. Trump was ahead of Harris 48% to 46% among registered voters, compared with a lead of 49% to 41% over Biden in early July.Republicans immediately began attacking Walz as a “radical leftist” and claimed that picking Walz was “a massive gift to Republicans”, suggesting his presence on the ticket will tank the Harris campaign.In a statement, the Trump campaign called Walz a “west coast wannabe” who has “spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden state”. The campaign brought up a clip from 2017 where Walz talks about electoral maps that show broad swathes of red, saying those areas are “mostly cows and rocks”.“If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare,” the Trump campaign said.Speaking in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Vance first told reporters he could not “say a lot about who Tim Walz is because the Democrats have shown a willingness to put a little switcheroo on us”, by switching presidential candidate from Biden to Harris.Vance said he had called Walz to congratulate him on his selection and would debate him, but only after the Democratic convention later this month.“So that’s the first reason,” for not commenting too much about Walz, Vance said – though he subsequently attacked Walz freely in terms he himself indicated: “The second reason is that Tim Walz’s record is a joke. He’s one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government, at any level.” More

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      in Elections

      Facts About Tim Walz: Teacher, Veteran and Harris’s VP Pick

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      Until recently, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was a virtual unknown outside of the Midwest, even among Democrats. But his stock rose fast in the days after President Biden withdrew from the race, clearing a path for Ms. Harris to replace him and pick Mr. Walz as her No. 2.Here’s a closer look at the Democrats’ new choice for vice president.1. He is a (very recent) social media darling. Mr. Walz has enjoyed a groundswell of support online from users commenting on his Midwestern “dad vibes” and appealing ordinariness.2. He started the whole “weird” thing. It was Mr. Walz who labeled former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, “weird” on cable television just a couple of weeks ago. The description soon became a Democratic talking point.3. He reminds you of your high school history teacher for a reason. Mr. Walz taught high school social studies and geography — first in Alliance, Neb., and then in Mankato, Minn. — before entering politics.4. He is a decorated veteran. Mr. Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard as a teenager and retired 24 years later in 2005, having served primarily in responses to natural disasters. He received honors including the Army Commendation Medal for heroism or meritorious service.5. He was a rare breed in Congress: a Democrat from the rural Midwest. For more than a decade, Mr. Walz represented Minnesota’s First District, in the southern part of the state. He was the top Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, supported funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, voted for the Affordable Care Act and voted against restricting federal funding for abortion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Peggy Flanagan Would Be MN’s First Female Governor if Harris and Walz Win

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      If Kamala Harris is elected president alongside Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who has been chosen as her running mate, the state’s lieutenant governor would get a history-making promotion. Under the succession plan laid out in Minnesota’s Constitution, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, 44, would become the state’s first female governor, as well as the first Native American person to assume the role. Ms. Flanagan, who was first elected to her current post in 2018, served on the Minneapolis school board from 2005 to 2009 and spent years training liberals who wanted to run for office. Among the rookie politicians she mentored was Mr. Walz, a former social studies teacher from the small city of Mankato, who got his start in politics in 2006 after winning a congressional seat in a largely rural, conservative district. Ms. Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, has championed improving relations between state government and leaders of the 11 tribal nations in the state. A native of St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, Ms. Flanagan was a vocal critic of Minnesota’s old flag, which was retired this year. She argued that the flag’s depiction of a Native American man and a settler was racist. In recent days, as it became apparent that her boss was being vetted as a vice-presidential candidate, Ms. Flanagan made clear she was rooting for him — and happy to serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in 2027. “I think Governor Walz would be honored to be selected to be the vice president, and I have been honored this entire time to serve the people of Minnesota,” she told the local news site Minn Post. “That would not change.” If she becomes governor, Bobby Joe Champion, president of the State Senate, would become lieutenant governor. Mr. Champion would be the first Black person to serve in that role. More