Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has chosen Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, according to multiple people briefed on the matter, elevating a former football coach whose rural roots, liberal policies and buzzy takedowns of former President Donald Trump have recently put him on the map.
Walz, 60, emerged from a field of candidates who had better name recognition and more politically advantageous home states. Minnesota is not a top-tier presidential battleground and is unlikely to prove critical to a Harris-Walz victory.
But he jumped to the top of Harris’ list in a matter of days, helped by cable news appearances in which he declared that Republicans were “weird.” The new, clear articulation of why voters should reject Trump caught on fast and turned the spotlight on the plain-spoken Midwesterner behind it.
Walz is in his second term as governor and spent 12 years in Congress, where he was the rare Midwestern Democrat representing a largely rural district. He served for 24 years in the Army National Guard and taught high school social studies before entering politics.
While his background was tailor-made for moderate voters, his policies as governor have been firmly liberal, reflecting what his allies call “prairie populism.” He signed into law a Democratic wish list of bills on marijuana, paid family leave, abortion rights and gun control. Republicans call him a left-winger in homespun clothing.
“In Gov. Walz, Democrats get the left’s full policy agenda from someone who often looks like he just climbed down from his deer stand,” said Tim Pawlenty, the last Republican to serve as Minnesota’s governor.
But his dual identity was part of what appealed to Harris, who came up through liberal Bay Area politics and prioritized in her search for a running mate the appearance of political balance that might help her win swing voters. Every one of Harris’ finalists for the job, including Walz, was a white man who had some record of winning in Republican areas.
That list included Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who was better known and more polished, hailing from a critical battleground state. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut, came with an impressive resume and a deep knowledge of border issues in his swing state that might have proved beneficial in blunting some Republican attacks.
But Walz, in providing a simple, cogent message about Trump and the Republican Party as Democrats were still processing President Joe Biden’s exit and Harris’ elevation, transformed himself in just two weeks from a little-known governor to someone who by January could be next in line for the presidency.
Walz was born and raised in rural Nebraska, and as a young man moved to Mankato, Minnesota, where he taught high school social studies and coached the school’s football team to a state championship. He retired from the Army National Guard in 2005 when he began his first run for public office.
Walz’s political origin story appears ripped from a Hollywood movie script.
In August 2004, he chaperoned some of his students to a campaign rally in Mankato for President George W. Bush. According to Walz, the group was turned away because one of the students had a sticker on his wallet for Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
Walz was furious, and went the next day to volunteer for the Kerry campaign. By the end of the year, Kerry had lost but Walz was determined to run for office himself.
In 2006, with a campaign staffed largely by his former students, Walz won an upset victory in a rural congressional seat that had been held by Republicans for 12 years. He served six terms in Congress before he won his first election as governor in 2018. His House seat has been represented by a Republican ever since.
“One of my favorite things is when I’m in Minnesota and someone will come up to me and say, ‘I had Coach Walz for geography’ or ‘He changed my life and his classroom was a safe space for me as a queer student,’” said Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, who was a volunteer for Walz’s 2006 congressional race. “That is how he ran his campaign.”
In Congress, Walz was considered a moderate Democrat who served on the House agriculture, veterans affairs and armed services committees. He had an A rating from the National Rifle Association for years, but when he ran for governor in 2018, after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, he renounced the group’s support and called for an assault weapons ban. Walz said he was influenced by an appeal from his daughter and has since turned the decision into an applause line.
“I’ll take my kick in the butt for the NRA,” he has said. “I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt.”
In 2022, riding a wave of Democratic anger over the Supreme Court’s decision ending the constitutional right to an abortion, Walz helped usher in full Democratic control of the Minnesota Legislature for the first time since 2014.
Walz and state Democrats flexed their new power. In 2023, he signed legislation codifying abortion rights into state law, legalized marijuana, enacted new gun control laws, provided free lunch to all public school students, created a paid leave program and provided undocumented immigrants access to Minnesota driver’s licenses.
By the end of the year, he took over as chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a perch that afforded him access to party donors across the country.
During Trump’s most recent visit to Minnesota, a state last carried by a Republican presidential candidate in 1972, Walz was asked to deliver preemptive counterattacks.
His description of the former president and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio — “These guys are just weird” — ricocheted online. Almost overnight, the “weird” label was adopted by Democrats around the country, including Harris.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
