Tim Walz -Son of Nebraska
The turning point of the presidential race was when Joe Biden graciously retired and endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor. Since that selfless act, Harris has gained six to eight points on Trump and currently has a two point in the national polls.
Harris further fueled that momentum when she selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. It was a brilliant choice. Tim Walz is a veteran, a hunter, a school teacher, a football coach and a prairie populist. He has spent approximately half of his life in Nebraska.
He was born in the small town of West Point. Most of his childhood was spent in Valentine where his father was principal of the high school. The family moved to Butte in his sophomore year of high school.
Walz attended Chadron State College and taught school and coached football in Alliance. Walz met his wife Gwen when he was teaching there and they subsequently moved to her hometown of Mankato, Minnesota.
Like many Nebraskans, Walz is an ardent fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The Lincoln Journal Star found a story that indicated that Walz attended the 1993 Oklahoma game. I was there as well. The temperatures were below zero but the Huskers’ big win made everybody feel warm. Nebraska beat Oklahoma 21–7 to go 11–0 and to lock up an Orange Bowl bid to play Florida State for the national title. I “stormed” the field that day. Go Big Red!
Walz ran for a red House Congressional District and ousted a Republican incumbent in 2006. He was re-elected to that seat five times. In 2016, he was re-elected for the last time to the House while Trump carried his district by sixteen points.
While he served in the House, Walz earned plaudits from members of the House on both sides of the aisle. He was ranked by Georgetown University’s Lugar Center as the seventh-most bipartisan member of the House.
Walz was then elected governor of Minnesota in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022. Trump himself appointed Walz to his bipartisan Council of Governors, which advises the president and Cabinet.
Paul Gazelka, a Republican who battled him as the Minnesota Senate’s majority leader during Walz’s first term as governor, said in a recent interview that Walz was an honest broker who worked well in what was then a divided government. Gazelka described himself as social friends with Walz despite having run against him for governor in 2022.
In 2022, the Democrats ran the table in Minnesota and gained control of both Houses of the legislature. The media and the GOP had widely predicted a “red wave” before the Democrats’ unexpected victories. (Simon Rosenberg, Vince Powers and I never bought into the “red wave” theory.)
Some of the policies Walz signed into law in Minnesota in 2023:
-Universal school meals
-Stronger labor protections
-Cannabis legalization
-Stronger LGBTQ+ protections -paid leave/sick -100% clean energy by 2030
-repro rights
-$1B for housing
-gun safety
-cut child poverty
Minnesota finished 6th in CNBC’s 2024 America’s Top States for Business study. It has finished in the Top Ten each year that Walz has been governor, with the exception of 2020, when CNBC did not publish a Top States study during the height of the pandemic.
Perhaps the biggest crisis Walz faced as governor were the riots in Minneapolis in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. Trump expressed support for Walz’s handling of the protests, according to a recording of a phone call obtained by ABC News — telling a group of governors that Walz “dominated,” and praising his leadership as an example for other states to follow.
“I know Gov. Walz is on the phone, and we spoke, and I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days,” Trump told a group of governors on June 1, 2020, according to a recording of the call, in which he also called Walz an “excellent guy.”
“I was very happy with the last couple of days, Tim,” Trump continued. “You called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins.”
The Republicans are trying to trash Walz’s commendable military service in the same way they denigrated John Kerry, John McCain and Max Cleland. Why do so many Republicans hate our veterans?
The Republicans have falsely claimed that Walz avoided service in Iraq in 2005. The fact is that Walz submitted his retirement request to the U.S. Army National Guard months before his unit was notified that they were going to be deployed to Iraq. His request was approved and his unit was fully staffed.
In contrast, Donald Trump never served and he dodged the draft to avoid service in Vietnam. Trump said that sexually transmitted diseases were his “personal Vietnam.” While McCain was being tortured in Hanoi, Trump was running around Manhattan chasing women.
For the record, Walz served twenty four years earning eight promotions and ending as a Command Sergeant Major, the highest NCO position. I don’t think JD wants to compare records but if he insists…
Vance served a single four-year enlistment in a desk job in the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, and wrote in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting.” Vance’s six month service in Iraq was in an air conditioned office. Must be nice.
“When we’re running against the generic Republican, our races are always really close, but there’s no such thing…These guys are weird. Once they start running, their weirdness shows up.” Tim Walz.
There is an anti-MAGA majority outside of the red states. Trump has never once gotten more votes than his political opponent. Ever. And under his stewardship, the Republican Party has had historic electoral defeats in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. The Democratic winning streak has continued into 2024.
Be confident going forward. Take nothing for granted. Keep working hard.
It’s America or convicted felon Trump. Choose wisely.