To the window, to the Walz
Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate this morning. Here’s what to know about the man, the decision and what’s next.
Vice President Kamala Harris has made her pick.
The morning after she became the official Democratic nominee, she tapped Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota to be her running mate in her campaign to defeat Donald Trump in November and make history as the first woman to be elected president of the United States.
Walz immediately lends Harris a surrogate and governing partner that will resonate with voters in the Blue Wall states critical to her most straightforward path to victory. He’s got invaluable experience representing rural constituents as a legislator and signing into law sweeping progressive reforms as his state’s chief executive. And he mainstreamed “weird” as the insult du jour to describe Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance that almost every national Democrat has adopted to describe the GOP in a welcome departure from President Joe Biden’s lofty effusions about the fate of American democracy and soul of our nation.
The Harris-Walz ticket will make its official debut this evening at a rally on the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia. The event is the first of a five-day barnstorm to introduce voters to the candidates in key swing states.
The announcement comes five days before the date Biden selected Harris as his running mate four years ago.
“We are going to build a great partnership,” she said in a statement. “We start out as underdogs but I believe together, we can win this election.”
Walz called it an honor of a lifetime to join the campaign.
“I’m all in,” he said in a statement that linked to a Team Harris donation page. “Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school.”
Walz, 60, is a former Army non-commissioned officer and retired social studies teacher. He has a diverse background, including coaching football, serving in the National Guard for almost 25 years, and volunteering for former Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.
He served as a House member from 2007 to 2019, representing Minnesota’s 1st district, a large, mostly rural district in the southern part of the state along its border with Iowa. Walz, who served as the top Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, was known for his bipartisan approach, having ranked as the 7th-most bipartisan House member during the 114th Congress. Upon his swearing-in, he was the highest-ranking retired enlisted soldier to serve in Congress.
Walz has been the 41st governor of Minnesota since 2019. As governor, Walz has focused on education, health care reform and police accountability, signing significant legislation in these areas, including a new compromise law in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
“Interestingly enough, he gets you a guy that connects with rural whites,” a veteran Democratic operative told me. “But he also attracts Black folks via his fight for police reform after George Floyd was murdered.”
During a historic legislative session in 2023, he signed several major reforms into law, such as paid leave, cannabis legalization and universal free school meals. He has also expanded LGBTQ+ and labor protections, set his state on the path to running on 100-percent clean energy by 2030 and invested $1 billion in affordable housing.
And he’s the first person on a Democratic presidential ticket not to have attended law school since Jimmy Carter in 1980. (Carter, who is nearing his 100th birthday in October, said in recent days his goal is to vote for Harris in November.)
“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep,” Harris said. “It’s personal. As a governor, a coach, a teacher and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his own.”
The veepstakes came down to Walz and Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania—a state Harris must carry to win the election.
Shapiro seemed like the frontrunner last weekend to the point a source on Monday texted me a quote about all the wonderful attributes the governor would bring to the Harris ticket. But Shapiro faced a fierce last-minute opposition campaign led by Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), whose personal beef with Shapiro reportedly inspired the first-term senator to warn the Harris campaign that Shapiro was too ambitious to play a supporting role. And some factions of the Democratic base bristled at Shapiro’s partiality toward school vouchers that provide parents with state funding to send their kids to private schools and his handling of sexual assault allegations about his former aide.
Shapiro said in a statement that he was grateful to speak with Harris over the weekend about her vision for the role and the campaign ahead but that serving as his state’s governor is the highest honor of his life.
“Pennsylvanians elected me to a four-year term as their governor,” he added. “And my work here is far from finished—there is a lot more stuff I want to get done for the good people of this commonwealth.”
Shapiro is scheduled to speak at tonight’s rally.
Harris also considered Gov. J.B. Pritzker (Ill.), Gov. Andy Beshear (Ky.), Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as potential running mates.
A source familiar with the process said Harris had not made a final decision as of last night because she wanted to sleep on it. The campaign had to print multiple versions of campaign signs for tonight’s rally with Harris’s name alongside the top finalists’ so it was ready no matter who won.
And as I wrote yesterday, the vice presidential selection process usually takes months. Not only did Harris have just a couple of weeks to choose her running mate, but she did so while balancing the responsibilities of her day job that required her to be in the Situation Room on Monday afternoon with President Biden and his national security team to discuss how the US can prevent Iran from kicking off World War III with its attacks on Israel and US servicemembers.
That Harris pulled it off in a matter of weeks with no unauthorized leaks from her team and a pick most Democratic voters can find something to love is a feat. With such a close election where every decision counts, Harris’s handling of her first big assignment should inspire confidence among undecided voters curious about her values and decision-making process.
Ahead of the decision, Hill Democrats I spoke to told me they trusted Harris’s judgment and drew comfort from the depth of the candidate pool she chose from.
“She’s got a great field of candidates that she’s taking a look at—some of them in the Senate, a couple of governors,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said in a brief interview last week hours before he traveled to Atlanta with the president for a campaign rally. “And the good news is that she knows a little bit about what that job requires because she’s literally doing it right now. So I trust the vice president’s ability to get to the right answer.”
President Trump pulled out of a scheduled presidential debate next month, which raises the question of whether we’ll see the two candidates at the top of each ticket match wits before the election.
But when Harris was still Biden’s running mate, the Trump campaign declined to commit Vance to a vice presidential debate. So it’s unclear if it will do so with Walz as his chief counterpart.
What is clear is how the campaign will attack Harris and Walz: In a statement, it accused Walz of spending his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of California.
“Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” the campaign said in a statement. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: Just like Kamala Harris, Time Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”
Walz will officially accept the nomination on night three of the Democratic National Convention, which kicks off in 13 days.
Do you have questions about the election? Drop me a line at michael@onceuponahill.com or send me a message below to get in touch and I’ll find the answers.