Washington: In an effort to win over rural, white voters, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced the selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz is a plain speaker from the American heartland and a champion of progressive policies.
Harris sent supporters a text message announcing the choice.
“I’m pleased to share that I’ve made my decision: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will join our campaign as my running mate,” she stated. “Tim is a proven leader with a strong track record of achieving results for Minnesotan families. I am confident that he will apply the same moral leadership to both the vice presidential office and our campaign.”
In his role as governor, Walz has promoted a progressive agenda that includes extended paid leave for Minnesota workers, tax breaks for the middle class, free school meals, and initiatives to combat climate change.
While serving as a representative for a rural district in the U.S. House and supporting gun rights and agriculture, Walz has long supported women’s reproductive rights.
Harris is bringing on a well-liked Midwestern politician whose home state consistently supports Democrats in presidential elections despite being close to Wisconsin and Michigan, two critical battleground states. Harris is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India.
These states are thought to be crucial in determining the outcome of the election on November 5th, and Walz is well-known for having a strong rapport with white, rural voters who have overwhelmingly supported Republican Donald Trump, Harris’ opponent for the White House, in recent years.
Josh Shapiro, the well-liked governor of Pennsylvania, was viewed by Harris as being more helpful in delivering his vital battleground state, but he ultimately selected Walz.
Following President Joe Biden’s (81), reelection campaign’s termination due to pressure from the party last month, Harris (59) emerged as the Democratic Party’s front-runner. Since then, she has amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising and used the enthusiasm of her party’s grassroots to recast the race against Trump.
On Tuesday night, Harris was scheduled to make an appearance at an event in Philadelphia alongside her running mate.
The Harris campaign is hoping that Walz’s lengthy tenure in the National Guard, along with his accomplishments as a high school football coach and his videos making fun of dad jokes, will draw in rural voters who aren’t quite ready to commit to a second Trump term in office.
Before the Harris “veepstakes” heated up, Walz was a relative unknown nationally, but his profile has since risen. Popular in Congress, he supposedly had the support of influential former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who played a crucial role in convincing Biden to withdraw from the contest.
In the November election, Harris and Walz will go up against Trump and his running mate, Midwesterner JD Vance, who is also a veteran of the military.
The George Floyd Factor In Walz’s Tenure
The death of Black man George Floyd in May 2020 at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer who was found guilty of murder defined Governor Walz’s term in office. People “don’t believe justice can be served,” according to Walz, who appointed the state’s attorney general to head the prosecution in the case.
The founder and president of National Action Network, Rev. Al Sharpton, claimed that Walz had listened to calls for Floyd’s justice by reaching out to the attorney general.
In a statement, Sharpton said, “I discovered then that he was a man who will listen and do what is right by those he represents.” “We can count on Governor Walz to take that same kind of open approach as Kamala Harris’ vice president.”
Officials from the Trump campaign and their proxies wasted little time in characterizing Walz as an extreme leftist whose principles are disconnected from the majority of Americans.
After Floyd’s death, they attacked his handling of the violent riots in Minneapolis.
“It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” the campaign said in a statement, referring to California, Harris’ home state.
Walz On The Attack
Using the catchy insult “weird,” which has been embraced by the Harris campaign, social media, and Democratic activists, Walz has attacked Trump and Vance.
In an interview conducted in late July, Walz dropped the new line of attack for the Harris campaign, saying, “These are weird people on the other side: They want to take books away.” It alludes to women’s reproductive consultations with doctors and book bans. “They want to be in your exam room.”
Furthermore, Walz has attacked Trump and Vance’s assertions that their qualifications are middle class.
“The middle class comes up frequently. Is it possible for a venture capitalist and a real estate tycoon to honestly claim they know who we are? Walz stated in The Ultimate News “They don’t know who we are.”
Harris needs to reconnect with young voters, and that strategy has resonated with them. The co-founder of March for Our Lives, a group dedicated to gun control, David Hogg, called him a “great communicator.”
Political science professor Ryan Dawkins of Carleton College in Minnesota described Walz as “sort of a unicorn”—a man from a small Nebraskan town who was born and raised and who can effectively communicate Harris’ message to both core Democratic voters and those the party hasn’t been able to reach in recent years.
His ability to resonate with rural voters was commended by Dawkins. The Biden administration has made an effort to appeal to this group through infrastructure spending and other practical measures, but so far there hasn’t been much evidence of success in their messaging.
According to Pew Research, Trump received 59% of rural voters in the 2016 election and 65% of them in 2020—despite Trump’s loss.
Although large portions of rural Minnesota supported his opponent, Walz prevailed in the 2022 gubernatorial election with 52.27% of the vote against 44.61% for the Republican.
Over his congressional career, Walz accumulated a centrist voting record, despite having supported Democratic Party orthodoxy on issues ranging from legalized abortion and same-sex marriage to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
According to The Almanac of American Politics, he was a steadfast supporter of government assistance for farmers and veterans of the armed forces, as well as gun rights that garnered commendation from the National Rifle Association.
He later received a failing grade from the NRA for endorsing gun control legislation in his maiden gubernatorial campaign.
It’s possible that Walz’s change in political philosophy as governor—from a centrist serving one rural district in Congress to a more progressive one—was a reaction to the demands of voters in larger cities like Minneapolis-St. Paul. However, it exposes him to Republican criticism, Dawkins stated over the phone.
“He runs the risk of reinforcing some of the worst fears people have of Kamala Harris being a San Francisco liberal,” Dawkins stated.
Walz is prepared with a retaliation.
What an abomination. In a July The Ultimate News interview, Walz stated, “Children are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn, and women are making their own healthcare decisions.” “So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.”
As chief executive of the state, Walz signed legislation outlawing marital rape and ordered people to cover their faces during the COVID-19 pandemic. In his quest for reelection in 2022, he oversaw several years of budget surpluses in Minnesota.
Walz boasted about having the support of numerous powerful labor unions during that campaign, including the state AFL-CIO, teachers, firefighters, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).