UPDATED, with Harris remark: Tim Walz, the twice-elected governor of Minnesota, has been chosen by Vice President Kamala Harris as her working mate within the 2024 presidential election.
“Tim is a battle-tested chief who has an unbelievable monitor report of getting issues carried out for Minnesota households,” Harris mentioned in a press release to supporters. “I do know that he’ll carry some principled management to our marketing campaign, and to the workplace of the vice chairman.”
“It’s the honour of a lifetime to hitch Kamala Harris on this marketing campaign,” Walz wrote on X. “I’m all in. Vice President Harris is displaying us the politics of what’s attainable. It jogs my memory a little bit of the primary day of faculty.”
Walz, 60, comes from a state that Democrats are broadly anticipated to win, however his folksy allure and non-Ivy League roots vaulted him to the highest of the veepstakes up to now week. He’s additionally been a selection of progressives within the celebration.
Boosters of the previous schoolteacher who served within the Nationwide Guard mentioned he would assist bolster the celebration’s standing amongst working class voters, as he grew up in rural Nebraska and later lived in a small Minnesota city.
Walz and Harris will seem collectively at a Philadelphia rally later in the present day.
CNN first reported on the selection of Walz.
A former member of the Home of Representatives who was first elected governor in 2018, Walz nonetheless didn’t have the identical nationwide profile as different VP contenders, together with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). Like different contenders, Walz did a wave of public appearances and media interviews, however his current description of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance as “bizarre” took off as a Harris marketing campaign speaking level.
Two different Minnesotans have served as vice chairman: Hubert Humphrey, beneath President Lyndon Johnson, and Walter Mondale, beneath President Jimmy Carter. Humphrey and Mondale every later gained the Democratic nomination for president however misplaced within the basic election.
Former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, showing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, referred to as Walz “great.”
“To characterize him as left is so unreal,” she mentioned. “He’s proper down the center. He’s a heartland of America Democrat.”
“He has a fantastic imaginative and prescient for our nation. It’s about working class households, rural America, it’s about our veterans.”
Republicans rapidly criticized the selection, signaling that they may spotlight the state’s sluggish response to quell the protests after the dying of George Floyd in 2020.
Trump’s marketing campaign rapidly labeled Walz a “dangerously liberal extremist.”
“It’s no shock that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris desires West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship making an attempt to reshape Minnesota within the picture of the Golden State,” the marketing campaign mentioned in a press release.
That mentioned, different potential decisions additionally had drawbacks. Shapiro’s reputation in Pennsylvania would have been regarded upon as a key asset in profitable an important swing state, however there have been fears that Shapiro, who’s Jewish, would reignite celebration divisions over the Israel-Gaza battle. Though his stances don’t differ from Harris and others, his potential choice bought pushback on social media and reportedly even from Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
Walz gained reelection in 2022 with 52% of the vote, whereas Democrats held on to the state Home and took management of the state Senate. Trump has campaigned within the state — with a rally in St. May final week — as his marketing campaign has set its sights on making an attempt to increase the electoral map. However Minnesota has the longest Democratic presidential profitable streak of any state, as Richard Nixon was the final to win it in 1972.
In contrast to among the different Democrats in rivalry, Walz is just not as well-known within the donor ATM that’s the leisure business. In his final gubernatorial marketing campaign, in 2022, he drew $18,825 in contributions from showbiz sources, based on the Nationwide Institute on Cash in Politics.
