The governor of Minnesota had a low profile on the national stage before today. Coming months will reveal his agenda.
The governor of Minnesota had a low profile on the national stage before today. Coming months will reveal his agenda.
Shortly before 9 am ET, “multiple sources” told CNN and others that Kamala Harris had chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. A few minutes later, the campaign confirmed the choice.
Walz doesn’t come from a truly swing state, as did other reputed short list candidates, such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. But he does come from the Midwest, and he doesn’t have the political baggage around Israel and Gaza that Shapiro brings to the table, or the statements in favor of the border wall and increased border militarization that Kelly has made, which have angered some of the Democratic Party’s base. Nor has Walz managed to alienate key trade unions, as Kelly has done with his opposition to pro-union legislation such as the PRO Act.
The Minnesotan presents a sort of stealth charisma. He has a storied ability, honed in the social science high school classrooms in which he taught before entering politics, to reach out to Midwestern voters without coming across as part of the coastal elites whom so many voters in the heartlands look at with suspicion; and, perhaps most importantly, he has climbed the political ladder over the past couple decades without alienating core constituencies, either on the left or the right of the party. He sounds relentlessly gentle, but underneath the soothing words he knows how to pack a political punch and has, in recent weeks, shown himself to be an effective surrogate out on the campaign trail and in television studios.
Appearing as a guest on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show a few weeks ago, Governor Walz came up with the “Republicans are weird” angle that rapidly became a viral meme. Despite its disconnection from a more forceful defense of specific political principles, the critique struck a chord without being too aggressive, seemingly speaking to the burgeoning fear many Americans have that the Donald Trump cult and its culture war focus have sent U.S. politics down some very strange and extreme roads in recent years. Since those “weird” comments, Walz’s political stock has risen seemingly by the hour.
First elected to Congress in a hotly contested swing district in 2006, Walz established a reputation as a political moderate, willing to stick his neck out on populist economic issues but at the same time connecting with rural Midwesterners who too often felt ignored by politicians on the national stage.
