Second-term Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former schoolteacher who signed a law in 2023 providing school meals free of charge to all students, is a biofuels advocate who also supports a shift to carbon-free electricity in the state. Walz, 60, represented a rural Minnesota district in the U.S. House for six terms before running for governor in 2018.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, announced Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, saying he was a long-time fighter for middle-class families. “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his own.” Walz gained attention by popularizing the word “weird” as a dismissive put-down of the Trump-Vance Republican ticket and its policies.
“It’s the honor of a lifetime to join @kamalaharris in this campaign. I’m all in,” said Walz on social media. He later said, “Growing up, I learned to be generous toward my neighbors, compromise without compromising my values, and to work for the common good.”
Born in north-central Nebraska, Walz served in the National Guard for 24 years, graduated from Chadron State University in northwestern Nebraska, and was a high school teacher for 12 years in Mankato, Minnesota, before running for the House, where he served on the Agriculture and Veterans Affairs committees. As governor, Walz enacted legislation setting a 2030 target for 100 percent carbon-free electricity, offering free school meals, and giving courts the power to confiscate guns from people who pose a risk; a so-called red flag law. “Gov. Walz stood up for fundamental freedoms and made Minnesota the first state to pass a law codifying abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe” v. Wade, said the Harris campaign.
Like other Midwestern governors, Walz supports biofuels and has called for approval of higher blends of the renewable fuels and year-round sales of E15, a 15 percent blend of ethanol into gasoline. Minnesota is one of the largest corn- and soybean-producing states. It produces more turkeys than any other state and is second to Iowa in hogs.
Minnesota is one of eight states with universal free-lunch programs.
The Trump campaign said Walz was a West Coast “wannabe” liberal who was “obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide.” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, said on social media Walz is “a radical. He is not a moderate or mainstream. He embraces [Vermont Sen.] Bernie Sanders’ policies.”
Rural Americans tend to be social and political conservatives. They voted for Trump in a landslide, 65-33, in 2020; even larger than Trump’s 59-34 margin in 2016, according to an analysis by Pew Research Center.
“He understands what it means to be in rural America, and I think that perspective is incredibly important,” said Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, who filled in for Walz in a Rural Americans for Harris-Walz zoom call on Tuesday evening. “People all across the United States of America are going to know what Minnesotans know, that Tim Walz is a good man who has a heart for people, and that is how we are going to win this thing.”
As a Midwesterner, Walz would defend the “blue wall” of industrial and agricultural states, stretching from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, that are expected to be crucial to Harris’s hopes for victory.
While in the House, Walz played a role in the 2008, 2014, and 2018 farm bills. He was the senior Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee when he ran for governor.
During his first term, Republicans criticized Walz as tardy in activating the National Guard during the violent unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2019 and as heavy-handed in employing mask mandates and business closures during the pandemic in 2020. All the same, Walz was re-elected in 2022 with 53 percent of the vote, with heavy support in the Twin Cities area. Democrats also gained control of the Senate and retained the majority in the House.