By our Reporter
Kamala Harris, Vice President has picked her running mate, with the announcement of Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. A former educator, Walz is currently in his second term as Minnesota governor and chairs the Democratic Governors Association.
He previously served 12 years in Congress, representing a conservative-leaning rural district that, both before and after his tenure, has been mostly dominated by Republicans.
In the time leading up to his selection as Harris’ running mate, Walz had first been an outspoken defender of Joe Biden following his disastrous debate performance as calls for the president to end his reelection bid escalated. When Biden did drop out, Walz endorsed Harris the next day and has since emerged as a reliable, energetic and cutting advocate for the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Picking Walz also underscores the Harris campaign’s focus on a path to victory that puts a premium on the “blue wall” states of the Midwest. Minnesota is slightly outside that sphere, but Walz, once a high school football coach, has evolved during his time in office into something of a progressive populist folk hero – the exact kind of pugilistic voice that Democrats taking on Trump are keen to highlight.Prior to Congress, Walz was a high school teacher and football coach and served in the Army National Guard.
Over more than a decade in Congress, he assembled a fairly centrist voting record. As a first-time campaigner, he opposed a ban on same-sex marriage and supported abortion rights.
And once in Congress, he balanced that out with comparatively more conservative positions on gun rights, which resulted in scoring a National Rifle Association endorsement.
Walz has since fallen out of favor with the gun lobby over his support for gun safety actions as governor.
Walz also ran for governor in 2018, emerging victorious by a double-digit margin. He won reelection in 2022 with 52 percent of the vote.
As governor Walz had to grapple with divided government and slim majorities in the state Legislature. But in 2022, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (as the state’s Democratic Party is known) won control of both the state House and Senate giving Walz’s party a slim “trifecta” of legislative control.
That allowed Walz to sign into law a raft of expansive social welfare programs such as free lunch for public school students, expansive access to Medicaid, increased protections that allow workers to unionize and expanded medical and family paid family leave.