Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has seen his national profile skyrocket as he becomes one of his party’s most vocal critics of the GOP in the wake of the presidential race’s shake-up.
Walz, who leads a blue-leaning state that former President Trump hopes to flip this fall, snagged national attention when he labeled the former president and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, “weird,” prompting other high-profile Democrats to seize on the same line of attack.
He’s also one of several Democratic governors being floated as a possible running mate for Vice President Harris. Although some observers think she’s more likely to go with a battleground-state pick like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Walz is pulling the attention and building a national brand based on his plainspokenness.
“When there’s a lot of noise, I think that level of communication is something that can be salient, that can connect with voters pretty quickly,” said Abou Amara, a Minnesota attorney and Democratic strategist, who added that Walz’s rising star doesn’t come as a surprise.
“I think his ability to connect with a variety of people across the Democratic spectrum is something people in Minnesota have known, but now I think the nation is starting to see,” Amara said.
Walz, a veteran and former high school teacher, represented southern Minnesota’s rural 1st Congressional District in Congress for six terms before winning the governor’s mansion in 2018. He fended off a Republican challenge in the midterms, securing a second term by roughly 8 points, and now chairs the Democratic Governors Association.
He has “a folksy charm and a really solid record,” said Democratic strategist Martha McKenna, but he also “had no national profile at all before a week ago, even.”
But Walz’s branding of Republicans as “weird” has caught on, bringing him into the national conversation as the so-called veepstakes talk swirls. At her first fundraiser as the likely Democratic nominee for president, Harris used the same language to knock Trump and Vance — as did Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on CBS.
The framing marks a notable change from Democrats’ more typical move to attack Trump’s ticket as an existential threat to democracy.
“Being a schoolteacher, I see a lot of things … People kept talking about: ‘Look, Donald Trump is going to put women’s lives at risk.’ That’s 100 percent true. ‘Donald Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have, end voting.’ I do believe all those things are real possibilities. But it gives him way too much power,” Walz told CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked about his viral clips.
The Minnesota governor also went to bat after Trump criticized Fox News for hosting him last week, adding to the recent moves observers see as auditions for a guard-dog vice presidential role.
“Take it from this small-town guy: Donald Trump knows nothing about rural America,” Walz said. “That’s why he’s going to lose Minnesota. And Wisconsin. And Michigan. And Pennsylvania.”
Walz “talks to voters like they’re his neighbors. And I think that is the way that the ‘weird’ comment caught on,” said Democratic strategist Tim Hogan, the former communications director for Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D) presidential campaign. “And I think that’s why he’s seeing the momentum that he’s seeing.”
Walz is being floated alongside a handful of other prominent Democrats in the contest for who could join Harris’s 2024 bid.
Battleground-state leaders, such as Shapiro and Kelly, are considered top contenders as Democrats look to put key states in their column this fall.
Minnesota has voted blue in presidential races for decades, but Trump has name-dropped Minnesota as a potential flip, and polling from before President Biden left the race showed him and Trump neck and neck in the state. New Trump-Harris polling has yet to emerge.
Amy Koch, a political strategist and the former Republican majority leader in Minnesota’s state Senate, said she sees Walz as a real contender to join Harris, since he can both shore up the North Star State and also represent a broader Midwest coalition.
“Minnesota, Wisconsin — there’s sort of a Midwestern vibe that he brings, which is just larger beyond Minnesota,” Koch said.
Walz could also serve as “the progressive antidote” to Vance, who has leaned into his small-town roots, Amara said. Last year alone, Walz signed gun safety initiatives, recreational marijuana legalization and reproductive health care protections into Minnesota law.
Walz hasn’t said whether he’s received vetting materials from the Harris campaign, but told CNN over the weekend that it’s “certainly an honor” to be mentioned in the vice presidential talks.
Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig (D) has endorsed him for the role.
The clock is ticking as Democrats’ August convention approaches — and the Democratic National Committee expects Harris to select her running mate by Aug. 7.