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      ‘Clear eyes, full heart’: the unlikely championship that launched Tim Walz

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      “We’re hiring another football coach,” Mankato West high school principal John Barnett told Scarlets head football coach Rick Sutton after interviewing Tim Walz about a geography teaching position. “You’re definitely gonna want to talk to him.”This was back in the spring of 1997, when Walz was a 30-something national guardsman relocating to Minnesota from Nebraska so his wife could be closer to her family. So Sutton arranged a second informal interview at his house, one that would ultimately decide whether Walz’s $25,000-a-year teaching gig would come with a $2,500 bonus for working with the football team. “I knew very, very early on in our conversation that this was a guy that I definitely wanted on my staff,” Sutton recalls of Walz, who took the job.By all accounts Walz made as strong a first impression with Kamala Harris; strong enough that the Democratic presidential nominee picked him to be her running mate over more popular choices. On Wednesday, the Minnesota governor takes center stage at the Democratic National Convention to accept the party’s vice-presidential nomination. His primetime speech could well come off sounding like one of his old half-time pep talks.Walz, whose progressive wins in the state legislature also recommended him for the job alongside Harris, has only recently emerged as a national figure since describing Maga Republicans and their retrograde politics as “weird”. With that one simple word, which suddenly has the right taking offense, Walz did in a single news cycle what Democrats haven’t been able to do in 16 years – and that’s retake control over the national political narrative by stealing a page from Donald Trump’s negative-branding playbook. “He’s always been pretty good at one-liners,” says Seth Greenwald, a standout Mankato West linebacker who played for Walz.“He hasn’t changed,” adds Chris Boyer, a former Mankato West running back.When Harris introduced Walz as her running mate in early August at a packed rally in Philadelphia, she referred to him as “governor” twice. Otherwise, she either called him “Tim” or “Coach” – a title that, in America, is arguably more respected than “Doctor” or even “President”. Walz’s coaching resume seems ripped from Friday Night Lights; the highlight, a worst-to-first turnaround that launched Mankato West as a perennial power in the state, is a study in flinty midwestern self-determinism. “The first couple times he gained political office, it was like ‘Wow,’” Greenwald says. “But then after seeing him accomplish more, after playing for the guy, having class with the guy – this is gonna sound crazy, but after a while nothing really surprises you. Now this is just his story.”View image in fullscreenAbout two hours south of the Twin Cities, Mankato West was considered a relatively large Minnesota public school, with about 750 students back then. Tom Boone, who started out coaching junior varsity football under Sutton, didn’t think he’d lack for turnout until just eight kids showed up for the first tryout in the summer. He was told more kids would show up once school began, which didn’t leave him much time to prepare for the season opener. “If it wasn’t rock bottom,” Boone says, “it was one step below us.”Walz brought a fresh energy to the school, challenging everyone and accepting challenges in kind. In the teachers’ lounge, Walz became renowned for his rolling debates with the theater teacher over whether the Great Wall of China could be observed from space, leveraging a connection to Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in hopes of settling the debate – which just mushroomed into a new argument about where space begins. (“What made his classes so fun is that he had been to so many of these other countries we would talk about,” Boyer recalls.) Walz offered extra credit to students for their civic engagement, explicitly during the 2004 presidential election. Famously, he served as faculty coordinator for the students’ gay-straight alliance. “It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Star Tribune in 2018 of the symbolic significance of his decision to advise the group.He took that same open-minded energy into football meetings, stirring up passionate strategic arguments among his fellow coaches. “But once we made a decision, we walked out and carried out the mission,” Sutton says. Outside of work, Walz was the colleague who’d bail you out of a snowstorm and sign up for any adventure. “I remember one time he asked me what I was doing after school, and I told him I was gonna replace my dishwasher,” Boone says. “And he was like, ‘I’ll come over.’ We didn’t know what we were doing. It didn’t matter.”When Mankato West replaced their old dungeon of a weight room with a new space, Walz turned it into a showcase for lifting competitions against his fellow coaches, some of whom were throwing up an impressive 350lbs in the bench press and the squat. “Back in the day it was on the players to put in the prep work, and they weren’t,” says Greenwald. “It took the coaches showing up at the ages that they were and saying, ‘Hey, if I can do it, you can do it too’, for the culture to change.”As Sutton tells it, the athletes in that weight room, many of whom played sports in addition to football, were the ones who spurred Mankato West’s “ascension” along with a number of large lineman who played in the trenches. All the while, he leaned heavily on a three-man staff that included Walz; Boone, the math teacher; and Aaron Miller, who taught social studies. Sutton made his assistants coach both sides of the ball. After a promotion to offensive coordinator, Boone also coached the defensive backs. Miller coached the offensive and defensive lines. Walz doubled as the running backs coach and defensive coordinator. The high demands they put on players ran the gamut. “I just remember having to compete in practices, on game days, even in the classroom,” Greenwald says. “The coaching staff was really good in terms of not letting us get away from working hard.”View image in fullscreenA diehard fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Walz ran a 4-4 scheme that took inspiration from the hard-nosed defenses assembled by legendary Huskers coach Tom Osborne. Like Nebraska, Mankato West’s school colors are red and white – but Walz began outfitting his defensive starters in black shirts during practices, a longstanding Huskers football tradition. Eric Stenzel – a 6ft 3in, 240lb outside linebacker who also ran track, put the shot and played basketball – was the gleaming cornerstone. “[He] ended up playing fullback at the University of Minnesota,” Walz said in a recent Pod Save America interview.While coaching football in the state at Alliance high school in Nebraska, Walz gained a reputation for getting the most out of available talent, defying students’ drill sergeant expectations and embracing them and exhorting them whether they succeeded or stumbled. After 1995 drunk driving arrest, Walz pleaded guilty to lesser charges for reckless driving. He stepped down as Alliance’s linebackers coach over protests from colleagues at the school, which kept him on the teaching faculty. Two years later, when Walz returned to football at Mankato West, the mistake became his oft-cited life lesson on what not to do; his insistence on not letting the mistake define him set an example for how to overcome.With passing not yet being en vogue at the high school level in Minnesota at the turn of the century, Walz ran a basic defense: the large linemen took up space, and the linebackers took care of the rest. “You weren’t getting too many blitz calls,” Greenwald says. “So when that call came in and you looked over to the sideline and saw him looking back, you knew he was rewarding you for having done something well. It gave you a little extra juice.” In 1998, Walz’s second season, the Scarlets made a shocking turn. Improbably, the squad was flush with playmakers. Early in that season, the Scarlets beat a team that finished runner-up in the state championship. That victory had them believing that maybe they could make a deep playoff run, too.But those hopes were dashed when their starting quarterback tore his ACL midway through the season. Without a dedicated backup, Sutton was forced to put his punter in at quarterback. Boyer, the feature back, became the Scarlets’ entire offense. (“That didn’t go well,” he says.) A once-optimistic season ended in a letdown. “You gotta understand, we were trying to do something that had never been done,” Greenwald says of the Scarlets’ title aspirations. “It was like we were trying to go to the moon. The seniors ahead of us in ’98 did a really good job of showing us what it was like to try to do it.” But that breakthrough put extra pressure on the team to improve on those results. It nearly cracked them.View image in fullscreenIn 1999, Mankato West started 2-4. The seniors on the team wrestled with their leadership roles. New quarterback Jay Nessler, a baseball and basketball star coming off a season-long football sabbatical, floundered. And all these growing pains came into sharp relief as Mankato West were pitted against bigger schools from the Twin Cities area. Greenwald remembers Walz telling the seniors on defense: “This is it, the breaking point. Your high school career could be over in as little as three weeks. You’ve got to decide who you are.”“The coaching staff in general did a great job of kind of laying that out on a silver platter and saying, ‘It’s right here if you want it,’” Greenwald adds.Ultimately, the Scarlets decided not to lose again, ticking off wins in their next seven games to streak into the state championship at the Metrodome, formerly the home of the NFL’s Vikings. Facing Cambridge-Isanti, a suburban Minneapolis high school, Mankato West hung on for a 35-28 triumph; a fourth-down interception by defensive back Jake Schmiesing deep in Scarlets territory sealed the Class 4A championship. “I remember us being upset with him because we coaches always talked about going for the knockdown instead of the interception on fourth down,” Boone says. “But Schmies was like, ‘Coach, it’s the state championship!’ Then it was like: ‘Alright, alright. We’ll let it pass.’”Once the Scarlets’ legacy of failure had been lifted, it was time to celebrate. After the game, a procession of emergency vehicles escorted the Scarlets back home for a massive pep rally in the school gym. But amidst the happiness and euphoria was a twinge of sadness.Here after all was a team breaking up at its peak, not because it wanted to but because it was all grown up. The seniors moved on to college. Boyer, who ran for 202 yards and three touchdowns in the title game, was looking forward to a big career at Division III Augsburg University until he suffered a grand mal seizure while driving and crashed into a utility pole his college freshman year. Physically and cognitively disabled now, he struggles to recall moments from that season – not least the fact that Walz was his position coach. It goes to show how fragile the memory of that championship is. And it’s no surprise that Walz was one of the first people to reach out to Boyer after the accident. “He’s just my teacher and my coach and my friend,” Boyer says.Before long, the Scarlets coaches would move on to other jobs. Walz quit teaching three years later to start his political career. And while Mankato West have gone on to win four more state titles, those who were part of that first championship in 1999 can’t help feeling that was the high point.The 25th-year anniversary of that championship team is coming up this fall. Walz’s recent rise would certainly raise the stakes for any reunion plans, especially if the Scarlets’ canny ex-coordinator pulls off another historic upset in November. “I can actually say I’ve been in the showers with a guy who could be in the Oval Office,” jokes Boone. “I would be lying if I said I agreed with every political decision Tim’s ever made. But I also know Tim’s doing what he believes is the best thing. Most people around here, whether they affiliate with the Democrats or Republicans, I know they can say Tim is a good guy that you can get behind regardless.” More

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      in US Politics

      Extremist or mainstream: how do Tim Walz’s policies match up globally?

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      Within hours of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, being chosen by Kamala Harris to be her Democratic presidential running mate, Donald Trump and team began attacking him as a “dangerously liberal extremist”.Trump surrogates seized on Walz’s record of expanding voting rights for former felons, combatting the climate crisis, and other measures as proof that Harris-Walz would be the “most radical ticket in American history”.If you step back from the melee, and look at his gubernatorial acts through a global lens, they appear anything but extreme. From the perspective of other industrialised nations, what Trump denounces as leftwing radicalism looks little more than basic public welfare provisions.Far from being militant and revolutionary, initiatives such as paid family leave, free college tuition and rudimentary gun controls – all championed by Walz in Minnesota – have long been regarded as middle-of-the-road and unremarkable in large swathes of the world. Through this frame, it is not Walz who is the outlier, but his Republican critics.Here are how some of Walz’s most impactful reforms compare with the rest of the world.Free school lunchesView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: “What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn.” That was Walz’s sardonic reply to CNN when he was asked about having introduced free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota schoolkids. The 2023 measure puts Minnesota among just eight US states that offer school meals at no cost to all children, no matter their family’s income.Around the world: Several countries provide free lunches for their children nationwide. Sweden, Finland and the three Baltic nations all provide meals at no cost for all schoolchildren irrespective of income, and many more European countries provide targeted or subsidised meals. Even a developing country such as India ensures access to lunch for more than 100 million kids daily.“The idea of offering free meals to all students during the school day is hardly new – many countries already do so,” said Alexis Bylander at the Food Research and Action Center, a US anti-hunger organisation. “Numerous studies show the benefits, including improving student attendance, behaviour and academic success.”Combatting the climate crisisView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: In February 2023 Walz signed legislation committing Minnesota to having all its electricity produced by wind, solar and other clean energy sources by 2040 – an even more ambitious timeframe than adopted by California, America’s sustainable energy leader. The legislature also passed more than 40 climate initiatives, including expanding charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and introducing a new code for commercial buildings to cut energy use by 80% by 2036.Around the world: By global standards, Minnesota’s ambitions do not stand out. Some 27 countries have written into law target dates by which they will become net zero – that is, stop loading additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In the developed world, Finland is leading the way, pledging to be net zero by 2035, and to begin absorbing more carbon dioxide than it produces by 2040. In December, almost 200 countries at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai agreed to call on all countries to transition away from fossil fuels and for global renewable energy to be tripled by 2030.Child tax creditView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: Last year the governor signed into law a child tax credit program for low-income Minnesota families. The measure sought to fill the hole left by a federal scheme that expired in 2021 after Congress failed to extend it. The Minnesota plan is the most generous of its type in the US, offering $1,750 per child and reaching more than 400,000 children.Around the world: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the forum of high-income democracies, reported in 2018 that 34 of the 35 countries with available information provided their people with some form of family benefit including tax credits. The OECD compared the value of family benefits for two-child families, measured as a percentage of average earnings, across 41 countries and found that the US came in at No 40, with only Turkey being less generous in its support.Basic gun controlsView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: The governor identifies as a proud gun-owner and hunter, and he accepted Harris’s invitation to be her running mate wearing a camo hat. That didn’t stop him in May 2023 enacting a slew of gun safety measures, including requiring all private sales of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to go through an FBI background check that looks for evidence of criminal or mental health risks. The changes also introduced a “red flag law” that allows relatives and other interested parties to intervene when someone is in danger of injuring themselves or others with guns.Around the world: International comparisons show that Americans own vastly more guns than civilians in other rich countries – 121 guns per 100 Americans, compared with five guns per 100 people in the United Kingdom. The number of gun killings per 100,000 people is also vastly higher: 4.12 in the US, 0.04 in the UK.Other countries also have much tougher gun controls that make those introduced by Walz look weak by comparison. Canada requires gun buyers to have a licence to possess or acquire a firearm and first time applicants have to wait a mandatory 28 days; it also imposes mandatory safety training and a ban on military-style rifles that does not exist in the US. The UK also bans some semi-automatic rifles and most handguns. Japan tightly restricts gun ownership, banning most guns other than air guns and a few other special categories and even then requiring owners to submit to annual inspections.Paid family and medical leaveWalz’s record: House File 2, enacted by the governor last year, gave Minnesotans access to up to 20 weeks in every year of partial wages to cover medical leave after a life-changing diagnosis, mental health leave, or time off to care for a new baby. “Paid family and medical leave is about investing in the people that made our state and economy strong in the first place,” Walz said as he signed the bill.Around the world: The US is the only OECD member country without a national law giving all workers access to paid leave for new mothers. Thirty-seven out 38 OECD countries offer national paid maternity leave – the only exception being the US. France, which holds the top spot, allows mothers and fathers to take paid leave until their child is three years old.The US is also one of only six countries with no form of national paid leave covering either family or medical leave in the case of a health concern.Voting rights for former felonsWalz’s record: The governor signed a bill that restores the vote to more than 50,000 Minnesotans who have been convicted of a felony. The Trump campaign denounced the measure as evidence of Walz’s “dangerously liberal agenda”, which is ironic, given that Trump himself, as a convicted felon, will only be able to vote for himself in November thanks to a similar reform in New York.Around the world: A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in June concluded that the US was an “outlier nation in that it strips voting rights from millions of citizens solely on the basis of a criminal conviction”. In 2022, more than 4 million people in the US were disenfranchised on those grounds. By contrast, when HRW surveyed 136 countries around the world, it found that the majority never or rarely deny the vote because of a criminal record, while those with restrictions tend to be much less draconian in their approach than US states. More

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      in Elections

      Gwen Walz, la esposa calmada y ultracompetente de Tim Walz

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      [Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]En 2006, durante su primera campaña para el Congreso, Tim Walz tenía previsto hablar en una cena de recaudación de fondos en Mankato, su ciudad natal en Minnesota. En ese momento, era un político desconocido que participaba en una campaña muy reñida contra un candidato titular que había ocupado el cargo durante seis mandatos. La cena le brindaba la oportunidad de hacer campaña en su distrito local del Partido Demócrata-Agrario-Laborista de Minnesota y aumentar los fondos de su campaña.Solo había un problema: Walz tenía laringitis.Mientras los invitados se servían la comida, se sorprendieron al ver que otra persona subía al escenario: Gwen Walz, la esposa de Walz.Estaba acostumbrada a hablar ante grandes grupos: al igual que su marido, Gwen Walz había sido profesora de una escuela pública durante más de una década. Los asistentes quedaron impresionados por su seguridad y claridad.“Hubo otros candidatos que hablaron, y ella fue la más elocuente del grupo”, dijo John Klaber, un residente de North Mankato que asistió a la recaudación de fondos hace casi dos décadas. “Todos miramos a nuestro alrededor y dijimos: ‘¿Por qué ella no se postula?”.La mayor parte del público estadounidense pudo ver por primera vez al gobernador Tim Walz la semana pasada en un mitin en Filadelfia junto a la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris, quien ese mismo día había anunciado que era su compañero de fórmula. Al final de su discurso, el país también pudo ver por primera vez a la mujer con la que ha estado casado durante 30 años.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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      in US Politics

      ‘On fire with excitement’: Tim Walz’s former students react to nomination

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      Imagine your teacher in the White House.For Tim Walz’s former students, the hypothetical could become real. And they’re stoked.The Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential candidate was a teacher in Nebraska and Minnesota before he ran for Congress in 2006. His time in the classroom features heavily on the campaign trail and in his governing. He has approved laws that provide universal school meals and add more money for education.He and his wife, Gwen, taught at Mankato West high school, in a town south-west of the Minneapolis area.There was high demand for his classes, said Jillian Hiscock, a former student at Mankato West. “It was hard to get into global geography. Who would have thought students would be fighting to get into global geography?“If you want to talk about strict, you got to talk about Mrs Walz,” she added. “I don’t think Tim had a strict bone in his body.”Mankato West alumni have convened in a Slack channel to share memories and excitement, finding community in the surreality of their former teacher potentially becoming vice-president. The alums usually bring up both Walzes as memorable and impactful educators who left impressions on them for different reasons.Beyond his teaching duties, he was part of the football coaching staff and an adviser to student groups, including the school’s first gay-straight alliance – in the late 1990s, in a small town in the midwest – after a student worked to set up the chapter.View image in fullscreen“It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Star Tribune in 2018.For Kamala Harris, the titles of teacher and coach played heavily into Walz’s potential as a running mate. The vice-president repeatedly called him “coach” during their first rally together.Hiscock, 41, had Mrs Walz as a teacher and knew Mr Walz through his advising of a youth in government program and volunteering to plan prom. He was a fun-loving teacher who met students where they were, known to play a Jeopardy game in the classroom.Walz was known to care about students, even those who weren’t in his classes, and knew about their interests, wishing them luck at their softball game or asking if they were ready for the choir concert, she said. He was named “most inspiring” teacher in the school yearbook one year.Walz was passionate about teaching the underlying causes that can lead to atrocities like the Holocaust. One oft-cited story from 1993 shows how Walz taught students in Alliance, Nebraska, to study those factors and then identify which country could be at greatest risk of genocide. They landed on Rwanda, the New York Times reported in 2008, accurately predicting the country’s genocide before it happened.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLaura Muhm, 40, had Walz as a teacher in 11th grade in 2001. He encouraged free-flowing discussion and would toss the lesson plan if needed, she said. He worked to expose students to different cultures, inviting a student who was Muslim to share about their culture.View image in fullscreenShe was thrilled when Walz was chosen to be Harris’s running mate. “I felt like I drank five shots of espresso. That’s how energized I felt. Like, almost too energized,” Muhm said.Mankato, the Minnesota town that Walzes claimed as home, is “just on fire right now with excitement. Everybody’s like, I know that guy,” Muhm said.Hiscock owns a women’s sports bar in Minneapolis, A Bar of Their Own, and hosted a watch party to view Walz’s first rally as vice-president nominee. The bar was standing-room only as they served a tequila-based “blue wave” cocktail, and a non-alcoholic drink of Mountain Berry Blast Powerade. Walz himself does not drink after a 1995 drunk-driving arrest – he prefers Diet Mountain Dew.She said she was talking to a reporter this week who noted how rare it was that so many people had such good things to say about their high school teacher – not always a well-liked constituency among teenagers.“I’m not trying to be like Pollyanna with you. It just literally doesn’t surprise me that nobody has a bad story about him,” she said. More

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      Ilhan Omar, member of the ‘Squad’, wins Minnesota Democratic primary

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      Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has won the state Democratic primary for her seat, according to the Associated Press, in a rematch against Don Samuels that comes two years after she barely eked out a victory against him.With 216 of 217 precincts reporting results, Omar was leading Samuels 56.2%-42.9%, according to Minnesota Secretary of State tallies.“We run the politics of joy,” Omar told supporters in Minneapolis on Tuesday evening. “Because we know it is joyful to fight for your neighbors … We know it is joyful to make sure housing is a human right. We know it is joyful to fight for health care to be a human right. We know it is joyful to want to live in a peaceful and equitable world.”Tuesday’s race was the last in a series of heated primaries for the progressive “Squad” of House Democrats who have been vocal in their criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. Fellow Squad members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri were recently defeated by candidates supported by a deluge of pro-Israel spending. Omar faced a lower-key race.The two-term congresswoman became the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in the US House of Representatives in 2019. While in office, she has allied herself with the left wing of the Democratic party, serving as the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and backing key progressive measures such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.Even before the 7 October Hamas attacks and Israel’s ensuing offensive, Omar had established herself as a vocal critic of Israel. She memorably drew criticism in 2019 for quipping that US politicians’ support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins”, in reference to donations from the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (Aipac). The comment drew accusations of antisemitism and she later apologized for it.In the wake of the 7 October attacks, and as Israel escalated its retaliatory war, Omar was among the first in Congress to call for a ceasefire. She has spoken out in support of the university encampments in solidarity with Gaza. Her daughter was suspended from Barnard College for taking part.These together would seem to make Omar a natural target of pro-Israel groups, but Samuels, a former Minneapolis city councilman has not drawn support from Aipac or its affiliated Super Pac, United Democracy Project. In contrast, UDP dropped more than $20m to unseat Bowman and Bush.The lobby groups have not said why they have not gotten involved in the Minnesota primary – but it is possible that Omar just did not provide them the fodder.Despite Aipac’s single-issue focus on Israel, its messaging against other Squad members has not focused on the issue.During Bowman’s race, his opponent George Latimer focused on Bowman’s vote against Joe Biden’s landmark infrastructure bill that numerous progressive lawmakers withheld support from in an attempt to build leverage to secure other progressive provisions. The idea that Bowman and Bush, who also voted against the infrastructure bill, had not played ball with Democrats became a centerpiece of Latimer’s campaign against Bowman and Wesley Bell’s against Bush.In her primary campaign, meanwhile, Omar has emphasized the money that she has been able to direct to her district and even featured Joe Biden in an ad. “Congresswoman Omar, I wanna thank you for being here – you never stop working to level the playing field,” Biden says in the ad.Additionally, Mark Mellman, the director of Democratic Majority for Israel – a pro-Israel group that also weighed in against Bush and Bowman – has cited the “vulnerability” of a candidate as a key factor informing whether the group gets involved in a race. Omar is popular in her district; internal campaign polling recently found her leading Samuels 60% to 33%.Samuels said he was “very disappointed” with his loss.“What I was hoping is that a strong ground game and an attention to the details of folks who felt left out would trump an overwhelming superiority in dollars,” he told the Associated press. “Clearly money matters a little more in politics than I had hoped.”Reuters contributed to this report More

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      ‘He has a proven track record’: behind Tim Walz’s appeal to workers

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      Vice-presidential picks have little effect on who wins a presidential election, many political scientists say. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s choice as her running mate, could prove the exception to that rule. Not least because of his track record of successfully appealing to working people.Angela Ferritto, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, voiced confidence that Walz will help the vice-president win in three pivotal states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin: “I strongly believe that Governor Walz will help the ticket. He has a proven track record of accomplishing things for working people.”Ferritto noted that as Minnesota’s governor, Walz enacted paid sick days, guaranteed more protection to construction workers against wage theft, and gave teachers greater negotiating power “over class sizes so they can give students the attention they need”.Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, said Walz had an underappreciated strength that is political gold. “He gets policies out of the left-right divide and gets people to agree that this is the right thing to do,” she said. “Who’s for large class size? Who’s for poorly paid teachers? Who’s not for letting Mom and Dad have time with their new baby? He has a way of taking ideology out of policies and making them seem like things we can get together on.”Steve Rosenthal, a political strategist and former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation, said Walz had another important trait – he is the type of candidate blue-collar workers would be happy to have a beer with. Walz likes to hunt and fish, he was long a union member while a teacher, and his financial disclosure forms show he owns no stocks or bonds.“What the two parties’ vice-presidential picks say is that both sides recognize the critical nature of winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania,” Rosenthal said. “I think Walz is a huge addition in those states.”He explained that people normally focus on who is at the top of the ticket, but “to the extent Harris has someone who can represent her in those three states, he can be a big help. He can camp out in those states. He can walk a picket line and go to union halls. He can be a huge plus.”While history shows that vice-presidents don’t often move voters to the polls, with Walz things “could be a little different”, said Lake, noting that Harris’s selection of Walz was getting huge attention partly because it was the biggest, early decision of her presidential campaign. “I think Walz definitely helps in terms of the blue wall strategy [of winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin]. It’s great to have someone from the midwest on the ticket. His story is great and complements hers.”On paper, political experts say, Walz should be an alluringly strong running mate because he served in the army national guard for 24 years, was a high school teacher for two decades and coached his football team to a state championship. Moreover, Walz, a 60-year-old father of two, grew up on a farm in a Nebraska town of just 300 people.Ever since Walz’s selection was announced, he and Harris have trumpeted his rural roots and decades of public service, while Donald Trump and his campaign have rushed to portray Walz as “dangerously liberal” and in other unflattering ways. In recent days, the Harris and Trump campaigns have been rushing to put forward clashing definitions of Walz, and which side prevails in defining him to the nation could have a major effect on how much Walz boosts the Democratic ticket.“A handful of national polls show that 60% and up of voters say they don’t know enough about Walz to have an opinion,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Milwaukee-based Marquette Law School Poll. “The Republicans are pushing hard to paint him in a negative way. Things are wide open as to whether he will be defined as a Minnesota dad or the socialist governor of Minnesota.”The Trump campaign’s attacks “are really exploding on him”, Franklin said, adding, “If Walz deals with them effectively, more power to him. If he ends up being swiftboated, just like John Kerry was, that’s not so good.”JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has accused Walz of leaving the military early to avoid serving in Iraq, but Walz says he retired from the national guard in 2005 to run for Congress, months before his artillery unit received orders to deploy to Iraq.Many Democrats voice confidence that Walz will beat back the Trump-Vance attacks and be a boon to the ticket. They point to his superb communications skills – he’s down to earth, clever and humorous, and he came up with the term “weird” to describe and deride Trump and Vance. Many Democrats applaud the policies he ushered in as Minnesota governor, including 12 weeks’ paid family and medical leave, free breakfasts and lunches for public school students, strong protections for reproductive freedom, and free college tuition at public universities for students from families making less than $80,000 a year.Even though studies have shown that vice-presidential picks usually affect election results by only a small margin, Walz’s addition to the ticket – and his midwestern, pro-worker bona fides – could make a crucial difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won each of those states by less than 1% in 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn June, Emerson College Polling and the Hill did a poll in Minnesota that found that Walz was plus 12 with women, minus nine with men, and plus 11 with 18-to-29-year-olds. Spencer Kimball, director of Boston-based Emerson College Polling said Walz could certainly help Harris attract and motivate younger voters. “Younger voters had moved away from Biden, not necessarily to Trump, maybe to a third party,” Kimball said. “What we’ve seen recently is the youth vote moving toward Harris, and I think Walz helps double down on that. The youth vote is one of the Democratic party’s bases. To get young people excited about the race is a potential gamechanger and can help reset the election map.”With regard to the three key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Ken Kollman, director of the University of Michigan’s center for political studies, said that there was “a big mother lode” of votes in Detroit and that voter turnout in Philadelphia and Milwaukee was hugely important. “The national election may very well hinge on turnout in those areas,” he said, adding that he didn’t think Walz would make much difference in those three cities.Walz could prove important, however, Kollman said, in making overtures to Democrats and blue-collar voters who have gravitated to Trump. “There is a group of Trump supporters who are pretty liberal on issues, which is one of the paradoxes of Trump’s appeal – people who actually rely on or believe in government support and active government intervention in their lives, their industry or their company.”Kollman said that Walz, because of his rural background and pro-worker record, “might be able to get some of them to break away from Trump. That remains a big question.”Lake, the pollster, agreed that Walz “can provide an opening” to voters leaning toward Trump, but said that Walz’s personal appeal alone could not win over many Trump-leaning voters. Lake said the “whole ticket has to improve” its efforts to reach them and persuade them.Ferritto of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO voiced optimism about Walz’s ability to win over Trump voters. “He flipped a congressional district that borders Iowa from red to blue,” she said. “He wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that unless he appealed to blue-collar voters.”Some, perhaps many, blue-collar Trump supporters will never hear Walz’s or Harris’s message, Ferritto acknowledged, because they are inundated from one side. “But I believe there are blue-collar voters who are willing to listen,” she said. “They want to hear facts. They want to hear about achieving real results. I do believe that Walz can reach those voters.” More

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      Free meals v hungry children: is this the school lunch election? | Marcus Weaver-Hightower

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      The humble school meal is having a moment. With the nomination of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, as Kamala Harris’s running mate, many voters and pundits are suddenly talking about school meals. And that’s good, because the stakes are high for the national school lunch and school breakfast programs since the campaigns and their parties have very different records and plans.Since Walz became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, an image of him has frequently circulated. In the photograph, he’s surrounded by smiling children hugging him after he signed a 2023 bill making school meals universally free for all Minnesota children. His was the fourth state to commit to feeding all children at school; now nine states have done so, and more are considering similar measures. No more forms to fill out to prove your income, which busy parents can forget or that get crumpled in a backpack. No more penalizing children when their parents fall behind on lunch accounts. Every kid gets fed, powering them up for their day’s work learning and growing.By most measures, the Minnesota program has been successful and popular. Participation in the meals program soared, increasing 15% at lunch and 37% at breakfast compared with the previous year. Due to those increases, the economies of scale improved, and some districts have been able to invest more in scratch cooking with ingredients from local farmers. It turns out that relieving cafeteria staff of the duty to go after parents who fall behind on lunch payments leaves them more time to focus on food quality.Minnesota’s registered voters are overwhelmingly happy with the program, too. A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showed that 72% agreed with the legislation, including 90% of liberals and 57% of conservatives. Even 59% of Trump voters in 2020 agreed. In online forums, Minnesota commenters tend to be remarkably supportive of feeding all children, even if they don’t have any themselves or if they think the food could be better. Parents rave about the convenience and savings.Minnesota’s success isn’t an outlier, but a consistent feature of free meals for all. A 2022 study of the national Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which provides universally free meals nationwide in districts that have a poverty rate of 25% or more, found that more kids eat when the meal is free. That’s true even among kids who were already eligible for free or reduced-price meals, suggesting that stigma is keeping many from accepting assistance. Even more helpful, families with children in schools that provide meals tend to spend less at the grocery store while still improving the quality of their diets. And, perhaps most important, research consistently shows that school meals improve students’ academic performance, behavior and health outcomes.It’s not assured that a Harris-Walz administration would push such legislation nationally. Harris has mentioned school meal programs at least twice, once in a 2017 Facebook post deploring lunch shaming and recently on X, when she touted Walz’s school lunch program as a sign of support for the middle class. But if the Democratic ticket does put the issue on its platform or list of priorities, school meals would at least have a knowledgable champion in Walz. He has seen it work on the ground, and he knows the benefits that it brings to the vast majority of families with children in his state.Meanwhile, Minnesota Republican lawmakers have criticized the free meals program. State representative Kristin Robbins’s complaint is typical: “All the low-income students who need – and we want to provide, make sure no one goes hungry – they were getting [meals] through the free and reduced lunch program. This [new legislation] gave free lunch to all the wealthy families … Is that really a priority?” Walz’s reply to this argument dripped with irony: “Isn’t that rich? Our Republican colleagues were concerned this would be a tax cut for the wealthiest.” The year before, the Minnesota GOP proposed a $3.5bn tax cut that largely would have benefited the wealthiest 20%. Feeding all the state’s schoolchildren, even after going over budget because it was so popular, costs only about one-seventh of that.Republicans at the national level, too, disdain expanding access to free meals and improving nutrition standards. In March, the Republican Study Committee, a caucus to which roughly three-quarters of all Republican House members belong, released its 2025 budget proposal. It called for ending the CEP for high-poverty districts. Doing so would snatch school meals from millions of children currently receiving them, shifting that cost back to their families. It would also probably increase the bureaucracy for schools, though Republicans claim that this administrative system is rife with “fraud and abuse”. While there have been high-profile cases of fraud in the school meals programs (for instance, a Chicago area nutrition director was recently convicted of stealing $1.5m, largely in chicken wings), most identified “abuse” entails clerical errors like giving wrongly categorized meals (free or reduced-price) to kids very near the income cutoffs or ringing up a meal without one of the required components on the tray, like enough vegetables. I would also point out that, if all children got the meals free, there would be no “fraud” in giving a hungry child a school meal, and we could save the labor and cost of all that paperwork.Reducing access to free school meals is also a priority of the now-infamous Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next administration. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but his ties to it are indisputable and a second Trump White House would probably be well populated with its adherents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRegarding school meals, Project 2025 repeats the willful deception that the federal lunch and breakfast programs are “specifically for children in poverty”. In truth, from their beginnings, these programs were meant for all children. But they always made allowances for impoverished children’s access – not only poor children, but inclusive of poor children. The authors of Project 2025 argue that any expansion of free meals is against the “original intent” and creates “an entitlement for students from middle- and upper-income homes”. (I wonder what they think of all those wealthy children getting free textbooks?) Their stated policy goals are to “work with lawmakers to eliminate CEP” and to “reject efforts to create universal free school meals”.While Trump himself may know little about school meals policy (I have never found an instance of him directly talking about it), his first administration set out immediately to relax nutrition standards set under President Obama. The very first policy announcement from Sonny Perdue, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, was that his department would seek to bring back higher-fat chocolate milk, reduce whole grain requirements and stop sodium reductions. And despite the US Department of Agriculture’s own research findings that Obama-era rules had made school meals significantly healthier and debunking claims that plate waste was increasing, one of the last acts of the Trump USDA was to propose a further weakening of nutrition standards to require fewer fruits and allow yet more usually high-salt items such as pizza and hash browns. But the clock ran out on that proposal, and the Biden-Harris administration then increased school meals’ nutrition standards.Given the Republicans’ legislative goals and the direction of one of the GOP’s leading thinktanks, a second Trump administration would almost surely unravel access to school meals and gut hard-won, incremental gains that have made them healthier. All this despite nationwide polls that indicate a majority of US voters agree that all kids should get universally free school meals. More

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      The evolution of Tim Walz: from high school teacher to VP nominee

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      Tim Walz must be having the wildest month of his life.After the Minnesota governor was announced as Kamala Harris’s pick for running mate, the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent senator Joe Manchin both put out statements praising him, an indication of his appeal across Democratic constituencies.“Dems in disconcerting levels of array,” Ocasio-Cortez joked on X.In the week since his name catapulted from relative obscurity – Walz flew up the shortlist of second-in-command possibles in a matter of two weeks, buoyed by clips of his TV appearances and memes about his dadliness – camo caps with orange writing have flown off the campaign merch shelves, a nod to Walz’s dressed-down midwestern attire.But beyond the appearances, his record in politics shows an evolution – a shift from a moderate Democrat winning over a Republican-leaning district to a governor who delivered a laundry list of progressive policy wins that has his critics fuming.Is he a progressive darling? Is he a moderate in progressive clothing? A centrist? Is this a bait-and-switch?Well, he’s Tim Walz.When you talk to people who know Walz, they all call him real, genuine, authentic, an everyman. There’s no reason to believe he’s putting on an act.But his way of selling policies is also calculated – a sign of a man who’s spent his life working to persuade people, from high school students tuned out in class to voters in a high-stakes presidential election. Beneath his “aw, shucks” demeanor is a skilled political operator.He’s knowingly tapped into a sort of universalism, selling Democrats’ ideas with broad popular appeal, said Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota.“His thinking is very much around: how is it that we can present our policies and our political agenda as benefiting everyone?” Jacobs said.The pre-politics lifeWalz was born in the small town of West Point, Nebraska, in 1964, then lived in a couple of other small Nebraska towns, ultimately graduating in a class of 25 students from a high school in Butte. He enlisted in the army national guard at age 17, serving 24 years before retiring.His father died when he was 19. He has said his family relied on social security survivor benefits to stay afloat. Walz subsequently moved around, taking some classes in Houston, Texas, then building tanning beds in Arkansas.He ended up back in Nebraska at Chadron State College, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1989. He first taught abroad, in China, for a year after college, then returned to Nebraska to teach locally.Walz met his wife, Gwen, also a teacher, and they moved to Mankato, Minnesota, a mid-size town south-west of Minneapolis. They now have two children, Hope and Gus, and have shared how they used in-vitro fertilization to bring them into the world.He was a part of the football coaching staff that led the school to a state championship in 1999. His status as a coach played heavily in Harris’s introduction of him in Philadelphia on Tuesday.And he was the faculty adviser for a new chapter of the school’s gay-straight alliance, at a time when LGBTQ+ issues were not embraced by his own political party, a nod to his progressive bona fides.His start in politicsWalz has said an experience taking students to see a George W Bush rally, where his students were turned away because organizers believed they were Democrats, led him to seek public office.He first ran for Congress in Minnesota’s Republican-leaning first congressional district in 2006, beating the Republican incumbent in an upset. One of his first radio ads highlights the hearing loss he experienced from using heavy artillery in the national guard and how the medical services he accessed helped him to hear his young daughter singing in the morning.“I am running for Congress because I believe we as a country have a moral obligation to ensure that every father can hear his daughter sing – that every citizen receives the best care our medical community has to offer,” he says in the ad.View image in fullscreenHis record in Congress proved moderate. He often co-sponsored bills with Republicans and was one of the few Democrats to vote to hold the then attorney general Eric Holder in contempt of Congress in 2012.A gun owner and hunter, Walz previously received endorsements and donations from the National Rifle Association and had an A rating from the group, which plummeted to an F rating after he gave the group’s donations to charity and signed gun control measures as governor. He has said mass shootings, like those in Las Vegas and at a high school in Parkland, Florida, showed him the need for greater restrictions.Walz supported the Affordable Care Act and the Dream Act, and he voted in favor of repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” anti-gay policy.“He’s got deep core convictions, but he’s driven by the facts and he’s driven by what he hears from the people that he’s representing,” said Josh Syrjamaki, who was Walz’s chief of staff in the district from 2007 until he became governor in 2019.Syrjamaki recalled tense town hall meetings during the Tea Party days where Walz would get hammered by conservatives upset with his votes. He would listen to their appeals and try to find common ground.He remembers Walz having to defend his votes on issues such as the Affordable Care Act, which was“pretty unpopular in very conservative parts of the country”.In a 2014 debate with his Republican challenger, Walz used a line he’s brought up now – that neighborliness is not socialism – and said party affiliation didn’t prevent him from working with someone or from calling someone out.“When I disagree with them, I don’t disagree because they’re Republican or Democrat, I disagree when they’re wrong,” Walz said at the time.He ran for governor in 2018. Walz won the Democratic primary and then the general election that year – he has never lost a race.He did not receive the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party’s endorsement – that went to Erin Murphy, now the majority leader in the state senate, who ran on a “politics of joy” message that looks a lot like the joy Walz is harnessing on the campaign trail now. The idea is borrowed from another Minnesotan, former vice-president Hubert Humphrey.Murphy said she started getting texts from people after Harris took over the ticket, saying the vice-president has the politics of joy, too. Walz, whom she has worked closely with, has the same “happy warrior” energy.“He really does care about people. I don’t know how we do politics if we don’t care about people, but, you know, it shines through in him,” Murphy said.A progressive wishlistWalz’s first term as governor required working with a divided legislature, limiting what Democrats could do. But then, in 2022, Democrats won both chambers of the legislature and Walz won re-election, giving the party a trifecta.Democrats took the ball and ran with it.The 2023 legislative session made national headlines. Democrats in Minnesota put up posters listing their top priorities – protecting reproductive rights, paid family and medical leave, driver’s licenses for undocumented people, universal school meals, clean energy, childcare assistance, gun control measures, felony voting rights restoration, a ban on conversion therapy. They checked them all off, with Walz’s signature on each one.The session was branded the “Minnesota miracle”.“He has really got a record now as a governor that is kind of a progressive dream list,” said Amy Koch, a former Republican majority leader.In the years before the 2023 session, progressive organizers worked to build support among voters for these kinds of policies, said JaNaé Bates, the co-director of Faith in Minnesota, an advocacy group. The group endorsed Murphy in the 2018 Democratic primary, but its work in that race “moved the Overton window for all of the candidates”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It took us 10 years to build the kind of mandate that was then shovel-ready once we got the trifecta in 2022,” Bates said.Melissa Hortman, the speaker of the Minnesota house, said she, the senate majority leader and Walz had gotten together the Friday after the 2022 election and went through their to-do lists, which were “very aligned”.“We were a team right from the get-go,” she said. “There was none of that kind of difficult stuff behind the scenes of like, who’s going to get credit? We just were a team. We went out there and did it together.”Walz championed some items heavily from the start, like paid family leave. He also pushed for the child tax credit and clean energy mandate.Universal school meals, in particular, have emerged as a battle line in this election. Walz has defended them in simple terms: kids need to eat so they can learn. Some Republicans, including those who wrote Project 2025, the rightwing manifesto for a potential second Trump term, refer to school meals as an entitlement program that should be curtailed.View image in fullscreenSydney Jordan, a state representative who sponsored the universal school meals bill in the house, said Walz initially got on board with a previous measure against school lunch debt shaming, which evolved into universal school meals. She wears a button that says “feed the kids”.Democrats in the legislature say Walz’s guiding principle is to use policy to help as many people as possible. And if that falls into the progressive camp, so be it. Some of the policies, like paid family leave, are broadly popular, noted Jamie Long, a Democratic state representative.“Governor Walz has a record that I think progressives can be proud of, but I think one of the reasons why he is such a good fit for the ticket is that he’s able to communicate the policies that we were able to achieve in Minnesota in a way that everyday people can understand, and in a way that I think speaks across political difference and doesn’t alienate folks,” Long said.Walz might not call himself a progressive directly, but he wouldn’t bristle if you called him one, his colleagues say. And he staunchly defends every policy he has signed.“You cannot call him anything else after what he just did,” Jacobs, the professor, said of the progressive label. The leading edge of his party is progressive, so he works with them and finds policies that can win enough votes to pass and then help sell the party to voters again at election time.But Republican lawmakers have felt shut out of the process. Lisa Demuth, the minority leader in the state house, said she liked Walz’s idea of “One Minnesota”, of unity, that he ran on in 2018. The slogan appears on a specialty license plate on his classic International Scout vehicle.“There was really no appetite of the Democrats to have to work with Republicans at all,” she said. There are only a handful of bipartisan bills from recent sessions, including one for nursing home support.“They had the votes. They had partisan priorities, they had full control of the entire state. And they were very clear in saying, ‘We’re going to push through what our priorities have been, and we’re going to get them done.’”Battle lines drawnRepublicans have quickly tried to paint Walz as radical after Harris’s announcement.“She picked a radical left man that is, he has positions that are not even possible to believe that they exist,” the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, said in a press conference this week. “He is going for things that nobody has even heard of. Heavy into the transgender world. Heavy into lots of different worlds.”Memes have spread calling Walz “Tampon Tim”, a reference to a law he signed that requires schools to carry menstrual products in their restrooms, which some have criticized because boys’ bathrooms may have period products in them as well. He also signed a trans haven law that protects access to gender-affirming care in the state.Others have attacked his military record, saying he retired from the service rather than go to Iraq with his national guard unit and that he was inflating his rank, given he did not complete training to be called a command sergeant major at retirement. These claims came up during his gubernatorial runs but are getting increased scrutiny on the national stage. Walz retired before his unit received orders to go to Iraq, though after an indication that the unit might be called up.And photos of Minneapolis burning after riots followed the murder of George Floyd by police have resurfaced. A report from state senate Republicans criticized Walz and Minneapolis’s mayor for being too slow to respond.Republicans have also scoffed at the idea that Walz could appeal to rural voters with his lengthy list of progressive policies. He didn’t win his old district in his run for governor.“I think he doubles down on the criticisms of Harris by the Trump campaign,” Jacobs said. “If you’re arguing that Harris is super liberal, you’ve just got an enormous example of that in Walz.”Demuth pointed to a comment Walz made in 2017 about electoral maps that show broad swathes of red, which Walz said were made up “mostly of cows and rocks”.“We are not rocks and cows,” the Republican lawmaker said. “He has not paid attention to greater Minnesota or the rural areas of Minnesota unless it’s been a good campaign strategy for him.”Vice-presidential picks themselves don’t typically sway many voters, though they can signal how a president would govern and can win some people at the margins. In a very close election, that can matter.But the pick is a sign that Democrats might try to win voters in places they haven’t in recent years. Some mentioned Walz’s appeal in places like the iron range, the iron-ore mining area in northern Minnesota that was once solid blue and is now trending more red, and hope that can translate to other parts of the Rust belt that Democrats need to win the presidency.View image in fullscreenThey also think he’ll appeal in the suburbs, where his plainspoken nature will sound familiar to voters in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan.He looks the part of a suburban or rural midwestern dad, the kind of guy the word “avuncular” was made for. And it’s not a costume – the camo hat, jeans, T-shirt and comfortable shoes are his actual clothes.“He only wears a suit if he absolutely has to,” Long said. “That’s not an act, that’s just him being Tim and not being willing to craft his image around what people think a governor ought to look like. He’s just who he’s always been.”But curbing the Democratic losses in some of these areas won’t be easy.Terry Gjersvik, a farmer who lives in Walz’s old congressional district and ran for office as a Democrat in the rural area in 2018, found Walz “indefatigable” on the campaign trail, bouncing from conversation to conversation with voters. Gjersvik lost his race, as many Democrats in rural areas now do.“In the rural areas, when you’re a Democrat, you stop the bleeding, especially on the statewide races,” he said.One Minnesota farmer told the Star Tribune that an electric vehicle law “burns my butt”. Another voter in a St Paul suburb has a sign in his yard that says “MY GOVERNOR IS AN IDIOT”, the New York Times reported. The 2024 election will also test how voters feel about the Minnesota trifecta’s work, with control of the legislature up for grabs.Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic party, said Walz’s “mind your own damn business” retort and his populist policies will endear him throughout the midwest.“We have a saying out here, and Tim Walz uses this, and he also embodies it, that if it doesn’t bother the cattle, it doesn’t bother me,” she said. More