Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the US presidency, has picked Minnesota governor Tim Walz — a former Congressman, army veteran, teacher, football coach, and a leader who traces his origins to a small town in the American Midwest — as her running mate to take on the Donald Trump-JD Vance Republican ticket.
Announcing her decision on Instagram on Tuesday morning Eastern Time, Harris said, “I am proud to announce that I’ve asked @timwalz to be my running mate. One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep. It’s personal.”
Walz, who heads the Democratic Governors Association, was largely unknown on the national stage until three weeks ago, when he stormed television networks and social media with a compelling counter-narrative against Republicans that drew on his own roots and understanding of the White working class in middle America, the key site of the political battle between liberals and conservatives.
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Combining sharpness with humour, he began calling the Republican leadership “weird” for some of their more extreme statements, a term that has now become a part of Democratic messaging.
But beyond the term, it was his rootedness in the Midwest that lent him authority and authenticity to take on the Republican far-Right, which has campaigned on painting Democrats as out-of-touch coastal elites in general and Harris as a “radical” or “San Francisco liberal”.
Trump’s decision to pick Vance, the author of a book on the cultural and economic anxieties of small-town middle America, was meant as a signal to the working-class voters in precisely the wider belt that Walz comes from, even though Minnesota specifically has voted Democrat in presidential elections.
“I think what Tim Walz’s selection says is that Kamala Harris has bent the knee to the far left of her party,” said Vance at a rally in Philadelphia, the city where Harris was due to hold a campaign event later on Tuesday.
Sketching out Walz’s biography, in what appeared to be an attempt to showcase his deep roots and story of struggle, Harris noted that he grew up in a small town in Nebraska, worked on a farm in the summer, relied on social security after his father died early, and enlisted in the National Guard where he served for 24 years.
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Walz, Harris wrote, then used state benefits meant for those who serve in the military to go to college and became a teacher, besides serving as both the football coach and the advisor of the Gay-Straight Alliance in the Minnesota school where he taught.
“I share this background both because it’s impressive in its own right, and because you see in no uncertain terms how it informs his record. He worked with Republicans to pass infrastructure investments. He cut taxes for working families. He passed a law to provide paid family and medical leave to Minnesotan families. He made Minnesota the first state in the country to pass a law providing constitutional abortion protections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and as an avid hunter, he passed a bill requiring universal background checks for gun purchases,” Harris said in her post.
Walz represented a conservative Minnesota district, only the second time a Democrat had won it, for over a decade in the US House of Representatives where he also served as a ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House during that period, hailed the selection of Walz and called him a true heartland Democrat.
Harris’s decision came hours after she secured the unanimous support of party delegates and became the official nominee of the Democratic party. It also came in the backdrop of some polls showing Harris edging past Trump, a big jump in just two weeks when Trump had a comfortable lead against President Joe Biden who dropped out of the race after his age-related deficits became an obvious liability.
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Walz responded minutes after the announcement and said on X, “It is the honour of a lifetime to join @kamalaharris in this campaign. I’m all in. Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school. So, let’s get this done, folks! Join us.”
Harris and Walz will hold their first rally in Pennsylvania later on Tuesday, the first of a whirlwind tour across the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada this week.
Walz, who will debate Vance if both agree on the terms, has already taken on the Republican vice presidential nominee. In a media appearance, a clip of which was posted by Kamala Harris’s campaign account, Walz said, “People like JD Vance know nothing about small-town America. It’s not about hate. It’s not about collapsing in. The golden rule there is mind your own damn business. Their policies are what destroy rural America. They have divided us.”
Using the “mind your own business” framing, Walz has woven it with the idea of “freedom” that has defined the Harris campaign so far. In the campaign, Democrats are painting Republicans as the party that is snatching away individual liberty with a focus on the roll-back of national protection for abortion. This is a departure from the past when it was the Republicans who painted Democrats as the party of big government and projected themselves as standing up for liberty.
Harris also considered Pennsylvania’s governor Josh Shapiro, who is extremely popular in the swing state that is a must-win for Democrats this November. But progressives were opposed to Shapiro for his pro-Israel position and support for school vouchers, a move that made teachers’ unions, a key component of the Democratic base, uncomfortable. For his part, Walz had the support of unions for his pro-labour position, abortion rights groups (Walz and his wife have also used fertility treatment to have children), gun safety groups, progressives and left-leaning students for his early demand for a ceasefire in Gaza.
