Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, choosing a champion of progressive policies and a plain-spoken voice to help win over rural, white voters from America's heartland, US media reported.
Walz, a 60-year-old U.S. Army National Guard veteran and former teacher, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 in a Republican-leaning district and served 12 years before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018.
As governor, Walz has pushed a progressive agenda that includes free school lunches, goals to combat climate change, tax cuts for the middle class and expanded paid leave for Minnesota workers.
Walz has long advocated for women's reproductive rights but has also shown a conservative bent while representing a rural district in the U.S. House, defending agricultural interests and supporting gun rights.
Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is adding a popular Midwestern politician whose home state votes reliably Democratic in presidential elections but is close to Wisconsin and Michigan, two key battlegrounds.
Such states are seen as crucial in deciding this year's election, and Walz is widely seen as adept at connecting with white, rural voters who voted heavily for Republican Donald Trump, Harris's rival for the White House.
The Harris campaign hopes Walz's extensive National Guard career, along with a successful run as a high school football coach, and his father joke videos will attract voters who are not yet committed to a second Trump term in the White House.
Harris, 59, has revived the Democratic Party's electoral victory hopes since President Joe Biden, 81, ended his failed re-election bid on July 21 under pressure from the party.
Walz was a relative unknown nationally until the Harris “Veepstakes” heated up, but his profile has since risen. A popular member of Congress, he reportedly had the support of powerful former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was instrumental in persuading Biden to drop out of the race.
Harris and Walz will also face Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, a Midwest military veteran, in the Nov. 5 election.
Stomping for Harris, sometimes in a camouflage baseball cap and T-shirt, Walz has attacked Trump and Vance as “weird,” which has been picked up by the Harris campaign, social media and Democratic activists.
a 'unicorn'
Walz gave the nascent Harris campaign a new attack line in a July interview: “These are weird people from the other side: They want to take books. They want to be in your exam room,” referring to book bans and women's fertility consultations with doctors.
Walz also attacked Trump's and Vance's claims of middle-class credentials.
“They keep talking about the middle class. A robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are? They don't know who we are,” Walz said in an MSNBC interview.
That approach is what young voters need to reengage Harris. David Hogg, co-founder of the gun protection group March for Our Lives, described him as a “great communicator.”
Walz is “somewhat of a unicorn,” said Ryan Dawkins, a political science professor at Minnesota's Carleton College — a man born in a small town in rural Nebraska who is able to deliver Harris' message to core Democratic voters, and one that the party has failed. To reach recent years.
Dawkins praised his ability to connect with rural voters. It's a group the Biden administration has tried to reach with infrastructure spending and other pragmatic policies, but so far with little showing of messaging success.
In the 2016 election, Trump won 59 percent of rural voters; According to Pew Research, even though Trump lost the election in 2020, this number increased to 65 percent.
In the 2022 governor's race, Walz won 52.27 percent to 44.61 percent of his Republican opponent, even though many in rural Minnesota voted for the opposition.
Walz has supported the Democratic Party's orthodoxy on issues ranging from legal abortion and same-sex marriage to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, while also picking up centrist voting records during his congressional career.
He was a staunch defender of government support for farmers and military veterans, as well as gun-owner rights that won praise from the National Rifle Association, according to the Almanac of American Politics.
He later filed a failing grade with the NRA after supporting gun control measures in his first campaign for governor.
Walz's transition from a centrist representing a single rural congressional district to a more progressive politician as governor marked the Minneapolis-St. the moment But that leaves him open to Republican attacks, Dawkins said in a telephone interview.
“He risks reinforcing people's worst fears that Kamala Harris is a San Francisco liberal,” Dawkins said.
Walz has a counter-attack ready.
“What a monster. Kids are eating and full, so they can learn and women are making their own health care decisions,” Walz said in a July CNN interview. “So if they want to label me, I'm happy to take the label.”
As the state's top executive, Walz mandated the use of face coverings during the COVID-19 pandemic and signed legislation outlawing marital rape. He presided over several years of budget surpluses in Minnesota en route to his 2022 re-election.
During that campaign, Walz enlisted the support of several influential labor unions, including the state AFL-CIO, firefighters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), teachers, and others.
His tenure was marked by the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murder. Walz tasked the state attorney general with leading the prosecution in the case, saying people “didn't believe justice could be served.”
