Minnesota Democrats are praising Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to tap Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, pointing out his record of working with female leaders.
Community leaders also touted his advocacy for Minnesota’s communities of color, including the signing of several laws that extended benefits to undocumented immigrants.
“I am thrilled,” said Sara Lopez, policy director for Unidos Minnesota, an immigrant advocacy group. “He knows how to work with women of color and share power with women of color.”
Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, shared a similar thought in a prepared statement.
“The last two years are a shining example that Tim Walz is good at working with strong women in full collaboration to get things done,” Hortman said. “I am thrilled by Kamala Harris’s candidacy and believe Governor Walz is a strong addition to the ticket.”
The announcement Tuesday that Walz is joining Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, could set in motion a historic makeover of Minnesota state government. Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, would become Minnesota’s first female — and Native American — governor. Senate President Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, stands to become lieutenant governor, and would be the first Black person in that role.
Over the 2023-2024 legislative session, Walz worked closely with Hortman as well as Senate Majority Leaders Kari Dziedzic, DFL-Minneapolis, and Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, to pass a raft of progressive legislation: free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota school children, codifying abortion rights into law, driver’s licenses and health insurance for undocumented immigrants, legal recreational marijuana, free college for low-income students and paid sick time and family leave for workers.
Walz and Flanagan first ran for governor and lieutenant governor in 2018 under the moniker, “One Minnesota.” Together, they promised to represent both white Minnesotans from rural areas, like Walz, and Minnesotans of color from urban areas, like Flanagan. Walz is expected to play a similar balancing role for Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to head a major party ticket.
Emilia Gonazález Avalos, Unidos’ executive director, characterized Walz as Minnesota’s “most pro-immigrant governor” ever. That includes the period before Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers dominated the state Senate and House during the 2023-2024 legislative session, Gonazález Avalos said.
Before then, Walz issued used his discretion to extend coverage from emergency Medical Assistance — the state’s name for Medicaid — for COVID-19 related injuries. This was important, Gonazález Avalos said, because undocumented immigrants are eligible to use emergency Medical Assistance. This impacted Gonazález Avalos’s own dad, who is undocumented and suffered the effects in 2020 of a severe case of COVID-19.
“For people like my dad, that meant a whole lot,” Gonazález Avalos said.
Gonazález Avalos also pointed to how Walz used his discretion to fund the Minnesota Dream Act, which gives scholarships to undocumented immigrants.
Rosa Tock, the executive director of the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, said immigrants and people of color gained greater visibility under Walz’s administration. She praised many bills Walz signed into law, including one that makes it easier for educators to earn a license to teach heritage languages, and another that requires all Minnesota schools to offer an ethnic studies course.
The DFL won control of the Legislature in 2022, paving the way for Walz to sign the Drivers License for All bill into law last year, allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for a driver’s license. Similar bills had unsuccessfully been introduced in the Legislature for more than a decade. The free breakfast and lunch bill he signed the same year also applied to undocumented schoolchildren.
“He has been very supportive of issues that many communities of color have been advocating for,” said Tock, who noted that she was speaking on behalf of herself and not the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs.
She added that it’s “in Minnesota’s DNA” to put a local politician in the vice president’s office, citing Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.
Strengths and liabilities
David Schultz, a political science professor with Hamline University, said that by picking Walz, Harris “is making it clear that she is running as a progressive candidate.”
Walz, whose political career extends nearly 20 years, started out as a moderate Democratic member of Congress representing southern Minnesota’s conservative, rural First District. Walz grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of about 400 people, and enrolled in the National Guard upon graduating high school. He began a teaching career in his home state and then moved to Mankato in the mid-1990s, where he taught high school geography and coached football. He was first elected to Congress in 2006.
Since being elected governor in 2018, Walz has clearly moved to the left, Schultz said.
“When Democrats got the trifecta two years ago, that pushed Minnesota politics to the left, and Walz went with it,” Schultz said.
Walz grabbed a national spotlight last month by appearing in television interviews where he criticized Trump and MAGA politics, coining that brand of politics as “weird.” In doing so, Schultz said, Walz emerged as “a very forceful and articulate critic of both Trump and the Republicans, but also in defending core Democratic Party values.”
That’s very attractive for the Democratic Party’s base, Schultz said, but a potential risk in key swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
“Those states are certainly more conservative than Minnesota,” Schultz said. “The center of their politics is clearly to the right of Minnesota.”
Walz’s potential liabilities include criticism about his handling of the riots that broke out in 2020 following George Floyd’s murder by former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Republicans have criticized Walz for not acting quickly enough to stop the unrest, which occurred over multiple nights and caused millions of dollars in damage. Walz eventually called the Minnesota National Guard to quell the unrest, but not until after protesters had forced police to flee Minneapolis Police’s Third Precinct office, which was then set ablaze.
Walz could also face scrutiny for the Feeding Our Future fraud case, which involved the alleged theft of $250 million in federal food-aid money that was earmarked to feed underserved children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prosecutors have said the case, which is centered in Minnesota, is the biggest pandemic-related fraud in the nation.
Walz’s Department of Education oversaw how the federal dollars were distributed to local nonprofits and businesses, which were supposed to feed children but instead, used the money to buy real estate and luxury goods. A state audit issued in June criticized the department for its handling of the money, and some state Republicans accused Walz’s administration in 2022 of failing to stop the fraud.
While those issues did not move Minnesota voters to reject Walz’s run for a second term as governor, Schultz said he thinks they will be more effective in attack ads in a national election cycle.
Salman Fiqy, a medical consultant in Burnsville and former Republican candidate for state House, said that some voters may see Walz as appealing in an everyman way. But he said Walz’s tenure as governor included positions on public safety and education that are turning Somali voters away from the Democratic Party.
Fiqy in particular takes issue with the Feeding Our Future case, saying that Walz shares the blame for allowing the fraud to occur. Several defendants have pleaded guilty in the case or were convicted of fraud at trial.
“He made it easy for people to take advantage of that weak system,” Fiqy said.
The case has negatively impacted Minnesota’s Somali community as a whole, Fiqy argued. Most of the 70 defendants charged in the case are East African. Fiqy said one of his friends bears the same name as Abdiaziz Farah, a defendant who was found guilty in June of fraud and money laundering. Wherever his friend goes, Fiqy said, people see his name and mistake him for the defendant.
The defendants in the case “did the crime no doubt,” Fiqy said, “but a part of the issue was the weak system that was implemented by the administration headed by Tim Walz.”
