With just a little under eight weeks to go until the U.S. Presidential Election and several battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona too close to call, every move is crucial to both campaigns on their path to the White House. Perhaps one of the most important decisions is picking a competent running mate that voters can get behind to help propel them to 270+ electoral votes.
As Labor Day came to a close last week, it’s safe to say it’s been a busy summer for both parties, especially the Democrats, who’ve had to engineer an entirely new campaign and approach for Harris, all of which has to be in place in time for the 10th of November. When they held the Democratic National Convention in Chicago a few weeks ago, there was much speculation over who Harris would pick as her VP, with names such as Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro, and Pete Buttigieg floating around. Ultimately, a single name was chosen, and it caught people off guard—the Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. Although all the candidates mentioned above are definitely qualified to be competent VPs, the Harris campaign had to make a crucial decision to maximize their votes. That decision led them to Tim Walz. Let me explain.
Tim Walz, for the most part, is a pretty normal guy. Born and raised in a small Nebraskan town, he had a straightforward childhood compared to other politicians nowadays. No fancy prep school, no trust fund, and no start-up business. Just some classic Nebraskan football, track, farm work, and hunting. After graduating high school, he joined the National Guard. He worked at a tanning bed factory for a few years before deciding to continue his education and pursue a degree in social science education, which led to him becoming a high school teacher/coach in Minnesota. There, he taught geography and helped the school football team—on a 27-game losing streak when he first joined—to a state championship within three years. Not an easy feat.
He then decided to run for Congress in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in 2005, a district historically dominated by Republicans, and beat the six-term incumbent, Gil Gutknecht. Again, a challenging feat. In 2018, after serving six terms in Congress and sitting on committees such as agriculture, veterans’ affairs, and transportation, he decided to run for Governor of Minnesota. He won with 53% of the vote and was subsequently re-elected in 2022 with 52%.
During his tenure as governor, Walz has focused on key issues such as education, healthcare, reproductive rights, infrastructure, clean energy, and gun control. He’s signed bills implementing universal free meals in Minnesota public schools, increased education funding, expanded access to early education, added mental health resources, and reduced financial barriers to post-secondary education. He’s also a firm defender of reproductive rights, as seen in his signing of the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act, which prevents state agencies from enforcing out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants, and extradition requests for people who travel to Minnesota for legal abortions. Walz has also overseen major infrastructure investment and development in transportation and internet access, committed to transitioning Minnesota to 100% clean energy by 2040, and put universal background checks and red flag laws in place when purchasing guns to help prevent gun violence.
To put it simply, Walz has been busy getting stuff done. Whether it’s leading a team with a 27-game losing streak to a state championship, getting all Minnesotan students free meals, or overseeing the 2023 legislative session (which some have called the “most consequential session in Minnesota history”), he has a proven track record and can back his talk. That’s why the Harris campaign chose him and his numbers are doing so well.
In a political landscape of back-and-forth attacks, virtue signaling, and empty promises, what Americans really want is some good old-fashioned progress, and it’s evidently been reflected in the polls. According to ABC, Walz has an approval rating of 40.3% and a net positive rating of 4.5%, much higher than any of the other prominent politicians involved in the race, such as Harris, Trump, Vance, RFK Jr., and countless others who haven’t even cracked a net positive rating yet.
Although it might seem counterintuitive, there’s so much more to American politics than just getting stuff done. The ability to debate, stand your ground, be relatable, and be likable is crucial. Again, luckily for the Harris campaign, Walz doesn’t fail to deliver in countless areas.
First, he’s a true family man, and he’s made it known. He has two children, a son and a daughter, whom he and his wife had after seven years of fertility treatment—a prominent topic as reproductive rights is a highly contested issue for the election, given the overturning of Roe v. Wade just over two years ago. It’s also hard to forget when he and his son shared a special moment at the DNC. As Walz was giving his first speech since being officially picked as VP, his son Gus gave him a tearful standing ovation—a bond on national TV that voters could connect and sympathize with on a personal level. JD Vance, on the other hand, who considers himself to be a family man with three kids of his own, has been struggling to make that family connection with voters after his “childless cat lady” tirades received a surprising amount of backlash over the past few weeks.
Speaking of Vance’s relationships, his one with former President Trump seems to be a little unclear, at least to the public eye. In the past, they weren’t necessarily the best of friends, with Vance once referring to Trump as “reprehensible” and calling him “America’s Hitler.” Although Vance has apologized for his past criticisms of Trump, the two don’t really seem to spend much time publicly together, unlike Harris and Walz, who just wrapped up a short bus tour in southeast Georgia and a sit-down interview together for CNN on national TV. They were also often seen laughing, bonding, and backing each other up, giving off the image of real friendship—something Trump and Vance don’t appear to be doing at all, appearing to be nothing more than just co-workers. A VP’s primary duty is to be the right-hand man to the president, and the Harris campaign has done a decent job pushing the image of Walz as the number two, at least compared to the Trump campaign.
Another duty of the second-in-command is to help lift the burdens of criticism facing the presidential pick, and the Harris campaign knew Walz had the capability to do so. After an incredibly unpopular tenure as VP and constant criticisms from Republicans over issues such as the southern border, the economy, and crime, Harris has been pinned down as a hard-leftist, with Trump even coining the nickname “Comrade Kamala.” While Walz served in Congress, GovTrack ranked him as one of the most moderate Democrats in the House, where he helped pass bills on veterans’ affairs and agriculture while also being a big non-partisan player, as half the bills he sponsored were created by non-Democrats. Although Walz has taken more progressive stances as governor, his ideological track record will certainly be harder for Republicans to pick apart.
Even though Walz’s track record has been impressive, it’s certainly not perfect. In 1995, Walz was arrested for drunk driving and pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of reckless driving, with his driver’s license suspended for 90 days. Walz has stated he hasn’t drunk alcohol since. Although not a good look for his image, it’ll be hard for the Trump campaign to effectively scrutinize him for this, considering Trump has already been convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records and still has three more legal cases to go. Another point of vulnerability Republicans have tried to attack is that Walz was never deployed in an active combat zone and retired just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, with Vance calling his career “stolen valor garbage“.
In essence, Tim Walz is the down-to-earth, family-like figure that American voters have been missing for quite some time. In such a political climate where candidates are so alienated and distanced from the everyday voter, the Harris campaign knew that Walz could help bridge that gap. That ability, combined with his productive track record, good old family values, public service, and past moderatism, made him the most promising pick out of a huge pool of qualified candidates. He could just maybe provide the Harris campaign with the map to win key states on the road to 270 in one of the most influential elections in decades.
Joven Heer
Joven is currently a Grade 12 student based in Vancouver, Canada. He loves biking, playing the piano, watching soccer, traveling, eating new food, writing and keeping up with politics!
