The Minnesota governor captured the Internet’s attention and influenced the Democrats’ message by succinctly summing up how he feels about Republicans: They’re weird.
Clips of Tim Walz are widely circulated, cementing his position as the national voice for Kamala Harris’ campaign and a potential vice presidential contender.
It’s not just the “weirdness” of it all: he’s been able to run through a list of what Democrats want, and what he’s done as governor during a period when Democrats played a major role in his state, that makes it clear to voters what they would be voting for. fornot just the danger of what they are voting against. He speaks clearly and pragmatically, and shows the common sense that his party stands for.
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Walz, 60, was born and raised in a small town in Nebraska. He became a teacher, first in China, then in Nebraska and finally in Mankato, Minnesota, where he taught geography and coached the high school football team. He was the faculty adviser for the school’s first gay-straight alliance chapter in 1999, long before Democrats took a national stand for gay rights. He also served 24 years in the Army National Guard, enlisting at age 17, a role that took him across the country and on a deployment to Europe. And like J.D. Vance, Walz has a penchant for Diet Mountain Dew.
He had a whole life before politics.
“Frankly, a lot of politicians are just not normal people,” said David Hogg, a gun control advocate and Walz fan. “They just don’t know how to talk to normal people.”
He comes across as what he is: a straight-talking teacher, the youth football coach. He’s “straight out of central casting, the kind of person you’d think the governor of Minnesota would be,” said Michael Brodkorb, the former vice chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party.
Walz first ran in a Republican-leaning congressional district in 2006, where he upset the incumbent. He held the district until 2016, defeating Republicans each time. In 2018, he ran for governor and won, successfully defending the seat in 2022.
He now chairs the Democratic Governors Association, a position that has given him a national profile over the past year as he has run first for Biden and now for Harris. His performances in recent weeks have taken off, putting his name on the VP shortlist and his tone front and center for Democrats.
In Minnesota, Democrats secured a three-way government in 2022, winning both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. Walz and his colleagues in the House went to work, securing a litany of progressive policy wins, including free school meals, abortion protections, gun control and legal marijuana.
If Democrats want to see what their party would look like in government, Minnesota is the model. But perhaps the policies are too liberal for the national stage, a TV interviewer suggested to Walz.
“What a monster! Children eat and have full bellies so they can learn and women make their own decisions about their health care,” Walz joked.
Hogg pointed to a speech Walz gave when Trump came to Minnesota last week, in which Walz was dressed plainly — like a Midwestern dad — in a camouflage hat and T-shirt, as an example of how down-to-earth he is. The outfit drew attention online because it didn’t look like a politician’s attempt to look like a normal person, but rather just Walz’s normal clothes. “He could be running for VP or he could be cleaning out the garage. It’s the weekend, anything can happen,” one tweet joked.
“Tim is just a true stay-at-home guy,” said Tim Ryan, a former Democratic representative from Ohio who worked with Walz in Congress and trained with him at the House gym.
Ryan recalled a recent clip in which Walz said Minnesota was one of the top three happiest states in the country. “Isn’t that really the goal here? To bring some joy? When he said that, I thought, Damn, that’s really good. That’s really good, because it gets us out of the political space and into the human space.”
It’s part of a vibe shift that Democrats have been feeling since Biden announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. There’s less focus on the dire consequences of re-electing Trump — though those consequences are certainly still part of the motivation — and more on spelling out what Democrats plan to do if they win.
“Fear and anger are such a low vibration,” Ryan said. “It’s just a negative vibration. And I think what Tim was talking about, like the hope of things to come, and the hope of what we’ve actually accomplished, and that we can do more. That’s optimistic, that’s a high vibration.”
Ryan is in text chains with former members who served with Walz, who are excited to see him in the spotlight and hope he is chosen as vice president, but will be proud of him regardless. House Democrats are also reportedly pushing for him to be Harris’s pick.
Former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota said Walz’s down-to-earth delivery works because it’s real. Contrast that with Trump’s pick for VP: “There’s a phoniness to J.D. Vance that’s the opposite of what Tim Walz is. Tim is the most genuine, down-to-earth person you’ll ever meet, and he comes from a background that’s unique in this day and age, especially for people in my part of the country.”
Heitkamp and Walz met while flying back and forth between DC and the upper Midwest, and she felt an immediate recognition of the kind of person he was, which she thinks is true throughout the Midwest.
“I met Tim Walz and I knew Tim Walz,” she said. “I didn’t have to say, what is this guy all about and what is his agenda? I knew his agenda because I had high school teachers like him who cared about their students and cared about their community.”
Progressives in Minnesota, who have sometimes clashed with Walz on policy, still support him. Elianne Farhat, the executive director of TakeAction MN, said she and her organization have deeply disagreed with Walz over the years, but he was a person who would change his position based on feedback. He’s evolving.
They and others pointed to his stance on guns. Walz is a gun owner and hunter who previously received endorsements and donations from the National Rifle Association and had an A rating from the group. But he changed his mind: He gave the group’s donations to charity after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, and he supported a ban on assault weapons after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. As governor, he signed bills restricting guns. He now has an F rating from the NRA.
“We don’t elect our saviors. We don’t elect perfect people. We elect people who we can make tough decisions with, who we can negotiate with, and who are serious about getting things done for people. And Governor Walz has demonstrated that quite strongly over the last few years as governor of Minnesota,” Farhat said.
The biggest disadvantage for Walz — and an advantage for other shortlisted picks, like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — is his geography. Minnesota is not a swing state, though Trump has said he thinks he can win it. Replacing Joe Biden at the top of the ticket likely takes the state out of the race.
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Republicans will also undoubtedly bring up the 2020 protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd, drawing connections between Walz, then governor, and the aftermath.
Still, his background as a teacher and a veteran of a congressional district that has traditionally voted Republican help make his case. “I mean, if you want the blue wall, Tim Walz is the blue wall,” Hogg said.
And Walz can win. His election results show his ability to build coalitions of voters, from progressives to moderate Republicans, Brodkorb said. And after his victory, he has shown that he knows how to get results.
“It is in his political DNA to be able to soften his critics, win over people and win in Republican areas,” Brodkorb said.
Regardless of whether Walz is on the ticket, his message shift will continue. “Weird” will stick. The Harris campaign has used it. “It’s really gotten under the skin of Republicans, which I think is a sign of how effective it is,” Brodkorb said.
Trump himself responded to the accusation: “Nobody has ever called me weird. I am many things, but I am not weird.”
“Nobody called Trump weird until Tim Walz did,” Heitkamp said. “And that resonated for a reason, because he’s weird. I mean, anyone who talks about Hannibal Lecter, that’s not normal behavior. I think there have been people who have tried to intellectualize Donald Trump, and Tim just cut through it and said, ‘This guy is not normal. This is weird.'”
While Trump surrogates often spend their time “cleaning up aisle five,” Walz can talk to voters about what he’s accomplished in Minnesota and what Democrats have in mind for the country, Heitkamp said. It’s a message that resonates with the base, but also with swing voters struggling with the cost of child care and college tuition, two of the issues Walz has addressed in his state.
“Being anti-Trump cannot be the message of the Democrats,” she said. “The message of the Democrats has to be about how we are going to govern differently than the Republicans.”
If Walz isn’t the VP pick, he’ll stay on the campaign trail to support Harris. Ryan said they should put him on a bus from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee, across the rust belt, to talk to voters.
“He’s a guy I think we should emulate, whether he’s the VP or not. He’s kind of our North Star,” Ryan said.
