Minnesota Democrats were thrilled to see one of their own win the most public veepstakes in recent memory, after the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, branded Donald Trump and his allies as “weird” and sold the story of how Democrats govern, based on what he has done in Minnesota.
Terryann Nash, an American Sign Language teacher at a local school who lives across the street from Walz’s residence, was excited to see a fellow teacher on the ticket.
“Even as a governor, he’s always come back to the schools. He’s always been in touch with the teachers. I feel like we’ve got a well-represented voice and a very good heart,” she said.
Ken Martin, the chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party and a longtime friend of Walz, said it was “bittersweet” that his longtime friend could be leaving the state, but that was a selfish thought.
“I’m proud to be able to share him with the rest of the country, and to be able to have him take a little bit of this Minnesota nice and Minnesota magic that we have and export it out to the rest of the country and help do some of the things we did here around the nation,” Martin said.
On Tuesday, television cameras lined the street outside Walz’s residence in St Paul, Minnesota, and journalists explained to viewers how their governor had, in a surprising and fast rise, been tapped as the Democratic vice-presidential pick.
At midday, people on their walks and bike rides slowed down, trying to figure out what was happening that required so many cameras. Some took photos of the house, with grins on their faces. A car drove by, honking excitedly at the people gathered.
In Minnesota, Walz is obviously fairly well-known: he is the governor. He’s also the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a position that has put him in some national circles to boost Democrats in office.
But until the 2023 legislative session, in which Minnesota Democrats used their trifecta to pass a wave of liberal policies and captured attention far beyond the state, his national profile was low-key. It wasn’t until recently that clips of him on TV went viral, as did old photos and videos that people dug up to show he could cuddle pigs at the state fair and sign legislation to help schoolchildren.
Until those TV clips, his internet fame was mild. He came out of nowhere in the veepstakes, surprising many as he was chosen on Tuesday.
As one former local reporter put it on X, when he started covering Congress in 2015, “Amy Klobuchar was on all the VP/2020 lists, Al Franken was on the rise, Keith Ellison was a national leader of the left, and Tim Walz was just the nice guy who beat them at the annual Hotdish Competition.” (His hot dish recipe, the “turkey trot tater tot hot dish”, won him the 2014 Minnesota Congressional Delegation Hotdish Off, the Minneapolis Star Tribune notes in its publication of the recipe. “If you’re new to Walz, or hot dish, give it a try,” the paper wrote. “We promise, it doesn’t taste ‘weird.’”)
His experience as a teacher could help bring together different factions to work on issues rather than give in to division, Nash said. His branding of “weird” shows he’s in touch with younger people, but his passion for teaching shows he has the ability to connect, she said.
“He’s been a teacher, so he’s like the dad of everybody,” Nash said. “I’m a teacher, so you got to be diplomatic. You got to recognize where some people are, and you got to kind of meet them where they’re at.”
There’s arguably no state in the country that’s done more legislatively than Minnesota in the past few years, said Martin, who has known the governor since Walz started volunteering on John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004, when he was a teacher in Mankato, Minnesota. That record helped sell Walz to Harris, alongside his personal story as a teacher and veteran from small-town America, he said.
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“He didn’t enter politics until his mid-40s. This is not a guy who spent most of his life growing up hoping to be vice-president of the United States, or even governor or congressman here,” Martin said.
Martin recalled how, when Democrats won both chambers of the legislature with just a one-seat majority in the state senate, Walz said they should not bank power for some later date, but use the power they won to make the biggest difference possible while they have it.
Sheletta Brundidge, a children’s book author and activist, was at the Walz house to send him off on Tuesday morning. She had a copy of an op-ed she recently wrote in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she shared how Walz would be an ally of Black women and have the humility to be the second name on the ticket. In the op-ed, she detailed how she was hesitant to get the Covid-19 vaccine, but changed her mind, only to be met with threats from anti-vaxxers. Walz helped her get extra security and was there as she got the shot. It showed her he knew how to support Black women.
“Now the Black woman is on top. She is the presidential candidate,” Brundidge said. “So it’s going to take a special kind of humility that white men have not traditionally had to support her. She is Gladys Knight. He got to be a Pip.”
Brundidge has four kids, three of whom have autism. She moved in Minnesota to access services that had long waitlists in Texas, and she has seen her children respond positively, attributing it to the state’s emphasis on early education.
“I moved so that I could have a better quality of life for my children. More than anything, I’m grateful to him for that,” she said.
Brundidge said her phone had been blowing up thanks to people who know her connection with Walz. She’s proud and excited to see him elevated to the national stage.
“People have been texting me like I got nominated for vice-president – congratulations, we’re so excited for you – because they understand and know what this means,” she said. “It puts the spotlight on our state and all the wonderful and amazing things that we have going on here.”