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Vice-president Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz to be her running mate, touting the work he’s done for middle-class families and his “deep commitment” to his own wife and children.
“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep. It’s personal,” she wrote in an Instagram post announcing the decision. “He worked with Republicans to pass infrastructure investments. He cut taxes for working families. He passed a law to provide paid family and medical leave to Minnesotan families.”
She added: “We are going to build a great partnership. We are going to build a great team. We are going to win this election.”
Harris’s announcement comes with a little more than a week to go until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The pair will hold a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening before they begin a tour through swing states.
“It is the honor of a lifetime to join Kamala Harris in this campaign,” Tim Walz said in a statement on social media. “I’m all in. Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school.”
Walz, a former history teacher, high-school football coach, congressman and two-term governor, has been a favorite of the online left for his passing of popular progressive policies and for starting the trend for calling Republican politicians “weird”.
Similarly, he has shown a willingness to aggressively attack former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Republican senator JD Vance.
“How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world?” he said during last week’s White Dudes for Harris event. “And how often in the world do you make that b*****d wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road?”
Harris’s selection was made on a condensed timeline after the president, Joe Biden, suddenly announced last month that he would not seek re-election, and then swiftly endorsed her to succeed him. On Monday evening, Dan Green, a Minneapolis communications consultant, posted a photo of a series of Black Chevy Suburbans in front of Walz’s residence, signaling that he might be Harris’s choice.
“Thrilled about the possibility,” Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison said. “Gov Walz is a team player, a listener, and I’ve been very pleased with how his office engaged with the AG’s office over the years.”
With 91 days until the election in November, the veepstakes turned into a mini-primary, with candidates representing various factions of the Democratic Party. The final list included Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Arizona senator Mark Kelly.
“A prosecutor and a teacher? There’s never been a better ticket!” Erin Maye Quade, a state senator in Minnesota, told The Independent via text message.
“But more seriously: this pick just shows how serious VP Harris is about building coalitions for our bright future,” Quade added. “Our successes in Minnesota are because of coalitions of working people, labor unions, parents, farmers, seniors, Black, white, brown and Asian, and young people. And Governor Walz is the perfect person to join this ticket and show America what it looks like when we care for one another.”
A retired schoolteacher and a veteran of the US army National Guard, Walz first won a seat in Congress in 2006 as a conservative Blue Dog Democrat who represented a rural part of Minnesota. In 2016, he narrowly won re-election in a district Trump won. In 2018, he ran for governor, by which time his policies had become more progressive. He famously gave away money he had previously received from the National Rifle Association.
As governor, Walz passed numerous progressive policies, including free school meals for children regardless of income, background checks on guns, and protections for LGBT+ people.
Trump, for his part, slammed Harris’s running-mate selection on Tuesday by painting Walz as a radical.
“From proposing his own carbon-free agenda to suggesting stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”
Trump and other Republicans have also criticized Walz for waiting to call in the National Guard in 2020 during riots after police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd. Trump has falsely said that he sent in the guard in the end, although the truth is that Walz was the one who made the call.
Harris and Walz will make a swing through battleground states across the country this week, starting in Pennsylvania before heading to Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.
JD Vance will hold a campaign event in Philadelphia before following the duo around other swing states.
Even before Harris selected him, Walz went on the offensive against the Ohio freshman senator, specifically hitting him for missing a vote to expand the child tax credit.
“In Minnesota, we’re cutting poverty and strengthening families with our child tax credit. You’d think JD Vance would be eager to do the same nationally. Except he skipped a vote to pass the federal child tax credit expansion yesterday,” Walz said last week. “Give me a break with that pro-family talk.”
