Kamala Harris’s selection of Tim Walz as her running mate brings to the Democratic ticket a straight-talking progressive with a record of winning over rural voters in the Midwest.
With Harris now narrowly ahead of her Republican rival Donald Trump in the polls ahead of November’s US presidential election, she and Walz are set to campaign together for the first time on Tuesday evening in Philadelphia, kicking off a five-day flurry of stops through the swing states that will be crucial for them to win the White House.
Here are five things to know about the 60-year-old vice-presidential pick:
He has rural appeal
The so-called blue wall states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — are crucial to a Harris victory in November. They were Democratic party strongholds until Trump clinched them in 2016, with US President Joe Biden taking them back in 2020.
On the day she announced her choice of running mate, Harris was ahead by 1.5 percentage points in Wisconsin, 2.1 points in Michigan and 1.1 points in Pennsylvania, according to a FiveThirtyEight polling average. She was leading Trump nationally by 1.8 points.
Although Waltz is not from one of these swing states, he represented a largely rural district in Minnesota — which borders the blue wall — in Congress from 2007 to 2019, after winning it from the Republicans. When he left the House of Representatives, it reverted to the party.
Walz’s experience in winning over rural voters could help the Democrats peel them away from Trump, particularly in the Midwest. With his background and folksy, colloquial manner, he could also help shield Harris from Republican smears that she is a member of the coastal elite.
He has an all-American back-story
Walz was born in a small town in rural Nebraska, and after graduating from high school he enlisted in the National Guard. After college, he spent a year teaching high school in China, then returned to serve in the Guard full time.
He then became a high school social studies teacher and met his wife, Gwen Whipple, also an educator, while they were working at the same school.
While he was working at Mankato West High School, he was a coach for its American football team, helping the players secure the school’s first state championship.
He spent a total of 24 years in the National Guard, retiring as a command sergeant in 2005, before winning his first congressional election in 2006.
He currently chairs the Democratic Governors Association, which supports the party’s governors and candidates across the country, a role that has given him fundraising experience.
He is loved by progressives
The selection of Walz is a victory for the progressive wing of the Democratic party. As an educator, he was a union member and has pursued a progressive agenda since he became governor in 2018.
Last year he signed a broad abortion rights bill into law to protect against any changes at the state’s top court. Along with Illinois, Minnesota has become a Midwestern haven for women from surrounding states with greater abortion restrictions.
Democrats in the state have also passed a host of progressive laws allowing paid family leave, free university tuition for low-income students, universal free breakfast and lunch in schools and progressive tax changes.
Soon after Harris announced her choice, the Trump campaign attacked Walz as a “radical leftist”. He has also been criticised by Republicans for being too slow to deploy the Minnesota National Guard to quell unrest in the aftermath of protests over the murder of George Floyd, which took place in Minneapolis.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis wrote on X on Tuesday that “Minnesota was ground zero for the BLM riots of 2020. Harris egged it on and Walz sat by and let Minneapolis burn.”
He is the king of ‘weird’
Walz was a somewhat obscure figure nationally until he was catapulted into the spotlight for his attacks against Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.
He has been credited with leading the “Trump is weird” strategy that has rattled Republicans. “These are weird people on the other side, they want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room, that’s what it comes down to”, Walz told MSNBC two days after Harris entered the race.
His media appearances in recent weeks, which could also be viewed as vice-presidential auditions, helped establish him as a formidable attack dog for Harris.
Democrats have for years had mixed success in portraying Trump and his followers as emblems of an extreme rightwing American fringe, rhetoric they toned down after the attempt on the former president’s life last month.
After Vance’s pronatalist “childless cat ladies” clip went viral last month, Walz said in another MSNBC appearance: “My God, they went after cat people — good luck with that. Turn on the internet and see what cat people do when you go after ‘em. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad”.
He has kept a low profile on the Gaza war
The war in Gaza has divided the Democratic party but Walz has steered a middle ground, staying relatively quiet on the issue.
He condemned Hamas’s “horrific attacks” on Israel in a post on X on October 7, adding that his “heart breaks for the victims of this terrible act of violence”. He also ordered flags on state buildings in Minnesota to be lowered to half mast.
After Biden visited Israel in October, Walz praised him for “reaching a deal to provide needed humanitarian aid to Gaza”.
“The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas, and Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. We cannot let terrorists like Hamas win,” Walz added.
The choice of the Minnesotan over Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who is a strong supporter of the Jewish state and a critic of student encampments at universities across the country, suggests that a factor in Harris’s decision making was keeping the Democratic party’s deep divisions over the war in Gaza out of the headlines.
Read the full article here
