Joe Lamberti/AP Photo
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a news conference for the Biden-Harris campaign on July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee.
As of two weeks ago, the only more unlikely political campaign in America than Harris for President was Walz for Vice President. But now that’s a reality. Six-term backbenchers in the House and governors from Upper Midwest states far from the Acela corridor don’t often make this kind of rapid dash to the center of American politics. How did Tim Walz do it?
I’m sure a lot of people would attribute it to one word: “weird,” which has become a Walz catchphrase. But while single-handedly turning around Democratic messaging overnight is noteworthy—and a refreshing return to Democrats talking like human beings and not people reciting a dissertation—I don’t think that’s what triggered the decision. Being good on TV is something Walz can do as a surrogate. And in a copycat business, any advantage from novel messaging is likely already gone; other VP candidates could pick that line of argument up.
Walz brings other attributes to the ticket. Yes, he’s a down-to-earth speaker who can connect with Midwestern voters, a crucial need in two battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan. He was also a frontline Democrat in the House for 12 years, who in 2016 won a district that Trump took by 15 points. The frontliner mentality to put yourself in the position to win elections adapts well to a national campaign. And in Walz’s case, that didn’t mean just voting conservatively; he knows how to message good and popular ideas for all audiences.
Having ties to longtime House members will help with governing; Walz had more congressional experience than any of the other VP candidates under consideration. His military record—he was a noncommissioned officer in the Army National Guard, and the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, also making him the highest-ranking enlisted man ever to serve in Congress—could be an asset as well.
But it’s Walz’s experience as governor of Minnesota that would be most helpful to Harris as a partner. In a best-case scenario, a President Harris will step into the same situation that Walz did in his second term in Minnesota, with a thin legislative advantage and a public desire for real advances. Walz’s improbable success in governing with a one-seat majority in the state Senate, and not much more in the state House, may have been an important factor in his favor.
Plus, the details of what Walz and the Democratic legislature in Minnesota got done look a lot like what Harris appears to want to get done in her first two years: focusing on child development and family care. Walz signed legislation giving paid sick leave for nearly all workers, as well as a paid family and medical leave law, with up to 12 weeks in benefits and a progressive replacement rate, where poorer Minnesotans get a higher percentage of their income while on leave. His 2023 budget included a $1.5 billion expansion of the child tax credit worth up to $3,000 per family. His 2024 education law expanded public funding for pre-kindergarten to 12,360 seats, and funded increases to the supply of child care. Long-term care and nursing home investments, Head Start grants, and “early learning scholarships” for preschool have also been part of Walz’s budgets.
On the campaign trail, he has real possibilities, with a small-town background and a history of working on rural, agricultural, and veterans issues.
These are all state-level versions of the key elements of the Build Back Better agenda that were left behind in 2022. While they are not perfect—the work history requirement of $3,500 in income is suboptimal, because mothers without work history need money even more—in other areas Walz recognized and advocated aggressively for universality, like with the free school breakfast and lunch program. “This just makes sense,” Walz said at the bill-signing ceremony at a local school, citing the improvement over the previous system, where families had to attest to income and sign up for a reimbursement program to get free meals. “This is the assurance that no one falls through the cracks because a busy parent didn’t fill out a form.”
That recognition is critical to more effective government, to taking away the “time tax” that often comes with means-tested programs. And it will be critical to deliberations over the signature legislation of a potential Harris presidency. The messaging helps too; the “happy warrior” ebullience of Walz’s successes in Minnesota harks back to another of the state’s vice presidents, Hubert Humphrey.
Walz has achieved some other goals in Minnesota that are also at the forefront of the national conversation, like a ban on junk fees and required disclosure of all-in pricing, including a “Taylor Swift” bill that applies all-in pricing to event ticketing. He has leveraged public dollars for the benefit of workers, like with a law using federal broadband money that prioritizes grants to companies that pay prevailing wages and offer training and health insurance. He even got a permitting reform bill through Minnesota that will accelerate clean-energy projects.
I take this stuff more seriously than a couple of weeks of good messaging that has made a lot of national progressives swoon. The vice presidency is not necessarily a governing role; the impact changes from president to president. But as someone with congressional ties (and the support of many House Democrats) and the experience of dealing with the very issues before the nation, Walz could be a real asset there.
On the campaign trail, he has real possibilities as well, with a small-town background and a history of working on rural, agricultural, and veterans issues. Democrats don’t have to win rural America to win the presidency, but limiting losses there makes winning overall much more possible. And to go back to weird, as Ezra Klein correctly says, it was a thunderbolt of a messaging revelation to just express the feeling people have had in their heads for so long. It hits a mindset of asking why Trump Republicans are so obsessed with identity and private personal issues. It’s going to be great to get him on a debate stage to articulate more deeply this vision of how Republicans sold out rural America, and went crazy over other issues designed to divide people.
There are some reservations to be stated here. Walz’s interventions at the request of Uber and Lyft to weaken pay standards and at the request of the Mayo Clinic to get an exemption to nurse staffing requirements are not great. And his dismissal of warnings about state pension funds should spur some more investigation. But there is no perfect candidate, and Walz checks a lot of boxes.
A few days into the Harris campaign, the Prospect wrote about Walz’s potential on the ticket. We’re now going to see that play out.
