Kamala Harris picks Minnesota’s Tim Walz as her vice-presidential candidate
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WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Aug 6 selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate, choosing a progressive policy champion and a plain speaker from America's heartland to help win over rural, white voters.
“As a governor, a coach, a teacher and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his. It’s great to have him on the team. Now let’s get to work,” she said in a statement.
Mr Walz, a 60-year-old US Army National Guard veteran and former teacher, said on social media platform X that it was “the honour of a lifetime” to join Ms Harris’ campaign. “I’m all in... So, let’s get this done, folks!” he said.
Mr Walz was elected to a Republican-leaning district in the US House of Representatives in 2006 and served 12 years before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018.
As governor, he has pushed a progressive agenda that includes free school meals, goals for tackling climate change, tax cuts for the middle class and expanded paid leave for Minnesota workers.
Mr Walz has long advocated for women's reproductive rights but also displayed a conservative bent while representing a rural district in the US House, defending agricultural interests and backing gun rights.
Ms Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is adding a popular Midwestern politician whose home state votes reliably for Democrats in presidential elections but is close to Wisconsin and Michigan, two battleground states seen as crucial in deciding the 2024 election.
She chose Mr Walz over Mr Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, who had been seen as essential to delivering his crucial battleground state.
Ms Harris, 59, became the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer
Since then, she has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and recast the race against Republican Donald Trump with a boost of energy from her party’s base.
She was expected to appear with Mr Walz at an event in Philadelphia on the evening of Aug 6.
The Harris campaign hopes Mr Walz’s extensive National Guard career, coupled with a successful run as a high school football coach, and his dad-joke videos will attract voters who are not yet dedicated to a second Trump term in the White House.
Mr Walz was a relative unknown nationally until the Harris “veepstakes” heated up, but his profile has since surged. A popular member of Congress, he reportedly had the backing of powerful former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was instrumental in persuading Mr Biden to leave the race.
Ms Harris and Mr Walz will face Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, also a military veteran from the Midwest, in a Nov 5 election.
Mr Walz’s tenure as governor was marked by the May 2020 killing of Mr George Floyd,
Reverend Al Sharpton, founder and president of civil rights movement National Action Network, said in a statement: “I learnt then that (Walz) was a man who will listen and do what is right by those he represents. We can count on Governor Walz to take that same kind of open approach as Kamala Harris’ vice-president.”
Trump campaign officials and surrogates quickly went to work trying to define Mr Walz as a hardcore leftist whose values are out of touch with most Americans, and criticised his handling of violent riots in Minneapolis following Mr Floyd’s death.
“It’s no surprise that San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” the Trump campaign said in a statement, a reference to California, Ms Harris’ home state.
Walz on the attack
Mr Walz has attacked Trump and Mr Vance as “weird”, a catchy insult that has been picked up by the Harris campaign, social media and Democratic activists.
He gave the nascent Harris campaign the new attack line in a late July interview: “These are weird people on the other side: They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room.”
He was referring to book bans and women's reproductive consultations with doctors.
Mr Walz has also attacked the claims by Trump and Mr Vance of having middle-class credentials.
“They keep talking about the middle class. A robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are? They don’t know who we are,” Mr Walz said in an MSNBC interview.
That approach has struck a chord with the young voters Ms Harris needs to re-engage. Mr David Hogg, the co-founder of the gun safety group March for Our Lives, described him as a "great communicator".
Dr Ryan Dawkins, a political science professor at Minnesota’s Carleton College, said Mr Walz is “somewhat of a unicorn” – a man born in a small town in rural Nebraska capable of conveying Ms Harris’ message to core Democratic voters, and those that the party has failed to reach in recent years.
Dr Dawkins praised his ability to connect with rural voters. It is a group the Biden administration has tried to reach with infrastructure spending and other pragmatic policies, but with little show of messaging success so far.
In the 2016 election, Trump won 59 per cent of rural votes. In 2020 that number rose to 65 per cent even though Trump lost the election, according to Pew Research.
In the 2022 governor’s race, Mr Walz won with 52.27 per cent to his Republican opponent’s 44.61 per cent, although swathes of rural Minnesota voted for the opponent.
While Mr Walz has supported Democratic Party orthodoxy on issues ranging from legalised abortion and same-sex marriage to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, he also racked up a centrist voting record during his congressional career.
He was a staunch defender of government support for farmers and military veterans, as well as gun owner rights that won praise from the National Rifle Association (NRA), according to The Almanac of American Politics.
He subsequently registered a failing grade with the NRA after supporting gun control measures during his first campaign for governor.
Mr Walz’s shift from a centrist representing a single rural district in Congress to a more progressive politician as governor may have been in response to the demands of voters in major cities like Minneapolis-St Paul. But it leaves him open to Republican attacks, Dr Dawkins said in a telephone interview.
“He runs the risk of reinforcing some of the worst fears people have of Kamala Harris being a San Francisco liberal,” Dr Dawkins said.
Mr Walz has a ready counter-attack.
“What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn and women are making their own healthcare decisions,” he said in a July CNN interview. “So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.”
As the state’s top executive, Mr Walz mandated the use of face coverings during the Covid-19 pandemic and signed a law making marital rape illegal. He presided over several years of budget surpluses in Minnesota on the road to his 2022 reelection.
During that campaign, Mr Walz touted the backing of several influential labour unions, including the state AFL-CIO, firefighters, Service Employees International Union, teachers and others. REUTERS
