Presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has chosen the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate in the presidential race, elevating a popular although relatively unknown leader who has attracted the support of progressive voters in recent days.
Walz has served as Minnesota’s governor since 2019 after 12 years in the House of Representatives and now leads the Democratic Governors Association. He has built a reputation as a folksy politician who can get things done, as Minnesota has adopted a number of progressive laws during his tenure. According to a poll conducted earlier this year, Walz enjoys an approval rating of 55% among Minnesotans.
Since Minnesota Democrats achieved a legislative trifecta in the 2022 elections, Walz and his allies have used their power to push a slate of progressive policies. The governor signed bills protecting abortion access, expanding background checks for prospective gun owners and legalizing recreational marijuana.
Related: Who is Tim Walz, the governor who is Harris’s vice-presidential pick?
“Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Walz said last year. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”
That philosophy has endeared him to progressives, who threw their support behind him as the veepstakes kicked into high gear over the past two weeks. They reshared clips of Walz lightly mocking his daughter’s vegetarianism and tinkering with his car to paint him as the dad that America needs right now. But as the running mate, Walz will need to introduce himself to a much wider audience. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that only 13% of Americans knew enough about Walz to register an opinion of him.
Walz also won praise for his deployment of a surprisingly successful attack line against Donald Trump. The Republican nominee and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, are “just weird”, Walz told voters.
“We do not like what has happened, when you can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with your uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary,” Walz, said late last month. “Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.”
The line was quickly adopted by other prominent Democrats, including Harris, and it seems to have unnerved the ex-president, who fiercely rebutted the accusation.
“They’re the weird ones and if you’ve ever seen her [Harris] with the laugh and everything else, that’s a weird deal going on there,” Trump told radio host Clay Travis on Thursday. “They’re the weird ones. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not. And I’m upfront. And he’s not either, I will tell you. JD is not at all. They are.”
Although Walz has won fans with his progressive policy agenda and his ability to irritate Republicans, other aspects of his record could present a liability in the election.
Walz received criticism in May 2020, when the city of Minneapolis was engulfed in unrest following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer. After a police station was set on fire, Walz criticized the city’s reponse to the unrest as an “abject failure”.
After days of increasing tensions, the state took over the response to the protests. Walz said he had followed the correct protocol by waiting for city leaders to request assistance before sending in the national guard, but some critics dismissed the governor’s action as too little too late.
“Above all else, this is a failure in leadership, and that leadership rests on Governor Walz’s shoulders. The governor cannot blame the mayors of Minneapolis and St Paul,” Paul Gazelka, who was then the Republican state senate majority leader, said at the time.
With Walz now back in the news as Harris’ running mate, he can expect that every piece of his resume will be subject to the strictest scrutiny in the weeks ahead.
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