Who is Tim Walz? The governor with a history of winning over Republicans

Minnesota’s governor captured the internet’s attention and swayed Democrats’ messaging by succinctly summing up how he views Republicans: they’re weird.

Clips of Tim Walz have spread widely, helping cement him as Kamala Harris’s pick to run alongside her as vice-president.

It’s not just the “weird” of it all: he’s been able to run through a list of what Democrats want, and what he’s done as governor during a banner time for Democrats in his state, that articulates to voters what they would be voting for, not just the danger of what they’re voting against. He speaks plainly and pragmatically, showing the commonsense policies his party stands for.

Related: Kamala Harris names Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, as running mate

Walz, 60, was born and raised in small-town Nebraska. He became a teacher, first in China, then in Nebraska and finally in Mankato, Minnesota, where he taught geography and coached the high school football team. He was the faculty adviser for the school’s first gay-straight alliance chapter in 1999, long before Democrats nationally stood for gay rights. He also served in the army national guard for 24 years, enlisting at age 17, a role that took him around the country and on a deployment to Europe. And like JD Vance, Walz has a penchant for Diet Mountain Dew.

He had a whole life before politics.

“Frankly, a lot of politicians are just not normal people,” said David Hogg, a gun control advocate and a Walz fan. “They just don’t know how to talk to normal people.”

He comes across as what he is: a straight-talking teacher, America’s youth football coach. He’s “right out of central casting as the way you think of Minnesota governor would be like”, said Michael Brodkorb, the former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican party.

Walz first ran for office in 2006 in a Republican-leaning congressional district, knocking off the incumbent in an upset. He kept the district until 2016, dispatching Republicans over and over. In 2018, he ran for governor and won, then defended the seat successfully in 2022.

He’s now the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a perch that has given him a national profile in the past year as he has stumped first for Biden and now Harris. His appearances in recent weeks have taken off, putting his name on the VP shortlist and his tone center stage for Democrats.

In Minnesota, Democrats secured a narrow government trifecta in 2022, taking both chambers of the legislature and the governorship, and Walz and his colleagues in the legislature got to work, delivering a laundry-list of progressive policy wins such as free school meals, abortion protections, gun restrictions and legal marijuana.

If Democrats want to see what their party governing would look like, Minnesota is the example. But maybe the policies would be too liberal for the national stage, one TV interviewer posed to Walz.

“What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own healthcare decisions,” Walz said jokingly.

Hogg pointed to a speech Walz gave when Trump came to Minnesota last week, in which Walz was dressed down – like a midwestern dad – in a camo hat and a T-shirt, as an example of how he’s down-to-earth. The outfit caught attention online for not looking like a politician’s attempt to look like a regular person, but just like Walz’s regular clothes. “He might run for Vice President or he might clean the garage. It’s the weekend, anything can happen,” one tweet quipped.

“Tim’s just a freaking down-home guy,” said Tim Ryan, a former Democratic US representative from Ohio who worked with Walz in Congress and worked out alongside him in the House gym.

Ryan called to mind a recent clip in which Walz mentioned that Minnesota ranked in the top three for happiest states in the nation. “Isn’t that really the goal here? For some joy? When he mentioned that I was like, dang man, that’s really good. That’s really good, because it gets us out of the political space and into the human being space.”

It’s part of a vibe shift Democrats are feeling since Joe Biden announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. There’s less focus on the dire consequences of electing Trump again – though those consequences are certainly still part of the motivation – and more on detailing what Democrats want to do if they win.

“Fear and anger is such a low vibration,” Ryan said. “It’s just a negative vibration. And I think what Tim talked about, like the hope of things to come, and the hope of what we’ve actually accomplished. We can do more. That’s optimistic, that’s a high vibration.”

Ryan is on text chains with former members who served with Walz and are excited to see him in the spotlight and were rooting for him to be tapped as vice-president. House Democrats were also reportedly advocating for him to be Harris’s pick.

Heidi Heitkamp, the former senator of North Dakota, said Walz’s plainspokenness works because it’s real. Contrast that with Trump’s VP pick: “There’s an inauthenticity about JD Vance that is the antithesis of what Tim Walz is. Tim is the most authentically kind of normal person you’re going to meet, and he has a background that is uniquely situated in these times, especially for people in my part of the country.”

Heitkamp and Walz got to know each other flying back and forth between DC and the upper midwest. She felt an instant recognition of the kind of person he was that she thinks translates throughout the midwest.

“I met Tim Walz and I knew Tim Walz,” she said. “I didn’t have to say, what’s this guy all about and what’s his agenda? I knew his agenda, because I had high school teachers just like him, who cared about their students and cared about their community.”

Progressives in Minnesota, who have at times clashed with Walz on policy, were still rooting for him, too. Elianne Farhat, the executive director of TakeAction MN, said she and her organization had disagreed deeply with Walz over the years, but that he was a person who will move and change his position based on feedback. He evolves.

She and others pointed to his position on guns. Walz is a gun owner and a hunter who previously received endorsements and donations from the National Rifle Association and had an A rating from the group. But he shifted: he gave donations from the group to charity after the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, and he supported an assault weapons ban after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. While governor, he has signed bills into law that restrict guns. He now has an F rating from the NRA.

“We’re not electing our saviors. We’re not electing perfect people. We’re electing people who we can make hard decisions with, we can negotiate with, and who are serious about getting things done for people. And Governor Walz has shown that pretty strongly the last couple years as governor of Minnesota,” Farhat said.

The biggest drawback for Walz – and a perk for other contenders on Harris’ shortlist, such as the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro – was his geography. Minnesota is not a swing state, though Trump has said he thinks he can win it. Biden being replaced on the top of the ticket probably takes the state out of contention, though.

Republicans will also surely bring up the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s murder by police, tying Walz, who was governor at the time, to the aftermath.

Still, his background as a teacher and a veteran from a congressional district that typically voted for Republicans helps make his case. “I mean, if you want the blue wall, Tim Walz is the blue wall,” Hogg said.

And Walz can win. His electoral record shows his ability to bring in coalitions of voters, from progressives to moderate Republicans, Brodkorb said. Then after winning, he has shown he knows how to get results.

“It is a part of his political DNA to be able to soften up his critics, win over people and win in Republican areas,” Brodkorb said.

Even if Harris hadn’t picked Walz to be on the ticket, his messaging shift would have continued. “Weird” is sticking around. The Harris campaign has used it. “It’s really gotten under the Republicans’ skin, which is, I think, a sign as to how effective it is,” Brodkorb said.

Trump himself responded to the charge. “Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.”

“No one called Trump weird until Tim Walz did,” Heitkamp said. “And it resonated for a reason, because he is weird. I mean, anyone who talks about Hannibal Lecter, that’s not normal behavior. I think that there’s been people who have tried to intellectualize Donald Trump, and Tim just cut through it all and said, ‘This guy’s not normal. This is weird.’”

While Trump surrogates often spend their time “doing cleanup on aisle five”, Walz can be out talking to voters about what he’s accomplished in Minnesota and what Democrats envision for the country, Heitkamp said. It’s a message that resonates with the base, but also swing voters who struggle with childcare costs and tuition, two of the issues Walz has tackled in his state.

“Being anti-Trump can’t be what the Democratic message is,” she said. “The Democratic message has to be about how we will govern differently from Republicans.”