Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has pursued an ambitious climate agenda in his state that has earned him plaudits from green groups and the environmental lobby as Vice President Harris's vice presidential pick. But that agenda marks a departure from his more centrist record on the issue in the House, which included votes to authorize the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and oppose former President Obama-era wetlands protections.
The Tuesday announcement of the pick was hailed by advocates, who have pointed to eye-catching moves like Walz’s 2023 signing of a law that requires Minnesota to get all of its electricity from carbon-free sources by the end of the next decade. Walz and allies in the state Legislature worked to pass more than 40 climate-related bills that session.
While Walz had a largely progressive voting record in the House, however, he was known to diverge from the party line on energy and environment issues and buck Obama, the only Democratic president whose tenure coincided with his.
Walz, who flipped a rural, historically Republican district in 2006, has a 75 percent lifetime score on environmental legislation from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), below the 90 percent score Harris received for her Senate career.
He received his worst annual score, 14 percent, in 2018, the year he was elected governor, after receiving a 97 percent the previous year. The LCV’s scorecard indicates he cast an “anti-environment” vote 30 times that session versus five votes the group scored as “pro-environment;” in 2017, the ratio was 34 pro-environment votes to 1 anti-environment vote. The one 2017 vote was in favor of a Republican-backed measure that would weaken Clean Water Act safeguards against pesticide discharge.
In 2014, Walz voted with the House’s GOP majority and 30 other Democrats to approve the approval of Keystone XL, a pipeline project that would have carried Canadian crude oil across the northern border. The pipeline has been a longtime flashpoint for environmental activists, and then-President Obama delayed it the next year. President Biden revoked the pipeline’s permit in 2021, and the operator, TC Energy Corporation, canceled plans for its construction outright later that year.
In 2015, Walz was one of only 24 House Democrats to vote to overturn an Obama administration rule adding small streams, wetlands, headwaters and tributaries to the waters falling under the authority of the Clean Water Act. Democratic opposition to the rule was largely concentrated among the right-leaning Blue Dog Coalition, though Walz was not associated with that caucus during his time in Congress.
And while his tenure as governor has been broadly progressive, Cassidy DePaola, communications director at Fossil Free Media, also pointed to his decision as governor to approve another hotly disputed pipeline, Line 3 of the Enbridge oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. The project, which completed construction in October 2021, has been fiercely opposed by local activists and tribal organizations.
Minnesota climate organization MN350 slammed Walz’s approval of the pipeline and the arrests of protestors attempting to halt the project.
“Shame on Governor Walz, who broke his campaign promise and left a legacy of climate chaos and oppression, militarizing the state against peaceful people who want to preserve our best odds for a livable present,” Andy Pearson, MN350’s Midwest tar sands coordinator, said in a statement in September 2021.
Walz’s shift to the left between Congress and the governor’s mansion reflects the change in his constituency from a single, historically red-leaning district to the more liberal electorate of the state as a whole.
It’s also a mirror image of the shift being made by the candidate at the top of the ticket: Harris opposed fracking and backed Green New Deal legislation as a 2020 presidential candidate, but her 2024 presidential campaign has said she would not seek a prohibition on fracking as president.
Kathryn Hoffman, CEO of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, told The Hill she believes Walz has made a sincere shift over the course of his career.
“I do think he has grown into that role over time as a climate champion and is stronger on it now than when he first came into office,” she told The Hill in an interview. “[He] definitely has evolved, and that may just be that as a state-level politician it’s easier to talk about.”
However, she added, “we’ve definitely seen him emphasize climate issues more recently than when he first was running” as well.
DePaola told The Hill she considered Walz’s evolution on climate politics “more compelling” as a political pitch than if he had spent his entire career as a climate hawk, saying it could appeal to new constituencies on climate in much the same way the governor has highlighted his status as a hunter and a former high school football coach.
“He wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t until he started to realty get involved firsthand with his community” — who in many cases had been affected by extreme heat, cold and flooding — “when he really became a climate champion,” she said.
“I think that there is some anxiety that comes with all elected officials living up to the promises they make for our community, but I think more than that he has shown really powerful leadership” on climate, she added.
