It’s official. Vice President Kamala Harris has announced that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will be her running mate in her bid for the White House.
If you’re feverishly Googling Walz’s name to figure out who he is and why he’s already earning near-universal praise from Democrats, here are six key things to know about him to save yourself some time.
Last year, after Democrats won a legislative “trifecta” in Minnesota, Walz signed a generation’s worth of liberal reforms into law in just four months, making his state a national leader in progressive policymaking.
Some of those new laws require Minnesota to offer 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, to provide free breakfast and lunch for all public school students, to restore voting rights to tens of thousands of formerly incarcerated people, to protect abortion rights and trans kids’ rights, and to move to 100% carbon-free energy by 2040.
As a kid, he worked on his family’s farm in Nebraska and joined the National Guard as a teenager to help pay for college. After graduating with a teaching degree, Walz taught in China for a year and then in Nebraska before moving to Minnesota in 1996.
He spent years as a social studies teacher and football coach in the Mankato school district in southern Minnesota before launching his bid for Congress in 2006. Walz, who is pretty bald, recently jokingly attributed his hair loss to spending 20 years supervising a school lunchroom.
“You do not leave that job with a full head of hair,” he wrote on social media. “Trust me.”
And supervised the lunchroom for 20 years. You do not leave that job with a full head of hair. Trust me. https://t.co/LrZH03kVDM
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) July 24, 2024
He represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District from 2007-2019. It’s a rural part of the state, and Walz unseated a Republican to win the seat. During his tenure, Walz was a strong voice on veterans issues and became the top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
As a member of Congress, Walz’s pro-gun voting record earned him an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. But he blasted the NRA after the 2018 high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, and as governor, he signed into law universal background checks and a “red flag” policy.
The Democratic governor’s kids, Hope and Gus, are now 23 and 17. Walz has talked openly about how he and his wife struggled to have children.
“My wife and I used Mayo Clinic reproductive services, and my daughter Hope was named Hope for a reason,” Walz told HuffPost in February when he was in Washington, D.C., in his role as the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.
“Because married for eight years, no children, wanting children. We got Hope because of this type of stuff,” Walz said.
Walz repeated the story during a “White Dudes for Harris” virtual fundraiser last week. He did not specifically say that he and his wife used in vitro fertilization, but rather “things like IVF” that he said Republicans would ban.
Abortion rights and access to reproductive health care more broadly have been major Democratic policy priorities since the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion in 2022.
In a press release announcing the Walz pick, the Harris campaign said Walz’s personal experience would cement “his commitment to ensuring all Americans have access to this care.”
He retired in 2005 as a command sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks. Walz has credited his Army National Guard service with sharpening his leadership skills as a congressman and governor.
“In the Guard, you put your community first,” Walz said in a 2020 Army press release. “Everything you do, you do to ensure the health, safety and security of the people who are depending on you. And as governor, those are principles of servant leadership that I rely on every day.”
Walz’s plain-spoken approach to politics and willingness to engage with people on social media like a normal person has attracted many fans.
Walz regularly shares photos of his cat, which means the crucial “childless cat ladies” voting bloc will almost certainly have his back. He brings family members into hilarious but official public service announcements as governor.
Most recently, Walz has gone viral for saying in TV appearances that he thinks Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, and MAGA supporters in general are just “weird people.”
The Harris campaign and other Democrats have latched on to his “weird” comment and amplified it in their messaging.
