The Memo: How liberal is Tim Walz?

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has been hailed by progressives — and lambasted by Republicans — for his purported liberal-left positions.

A look at his overall record reveals a more nuanced picture.

Walz hewed to more moderate views during his 12 years representing a predominantly rural House district in southern Minnesota. Even during his first term as governor — he was first elected in 2018 — Walz was constrained by a Republican majority in the state Senate.

Democrats won full control of the state government in 2022, however, and Walz’s second term has been marked by a full-bore pursuit of progressive priorities.

The seeming schism in Walz’s ideological history has become a point of red-hot political debate since he was revealed as Vice President Harris’s running mate Tuesday.

Walz was the clear preference of progressives within the Democratic Party, and Harris’s decision to choose him was welcomed by key figures on the left including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)

Yet Walz also gained plaudits from centrists including Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), the longtime conservative Democrat who left the party in May and is now an independent. 

Manchin said Walz would “bring normality back to the most chaotic political environment that most of us have ever seen.”

Republicans are portraying Walz as representing anything but a return to normalcy.

Former President Trump described the selection of the Minnesota governor as a “shocking pick” during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, terming Walz “a very liberal man.”

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley contended Harris and Walz together “make up the most radical, far-left ticket in the history of our country.”

On social media, conservatives have rushed to label Walz as “Tampon Tim” over a bill he signed as governor which went into effect at the start of this year. It requires menstrual products, including tampons, to be provided in both boys’ and girls’ public school restrooms in Minnesota.

That kind of position seems to sit incongruously with Walz’s record during his years in Congress.

During his final term, the GovTrack website rated Walz the 12th “most politically right” member of the House Democratic Caucus. The website noted he was in the “94th percentile” of his caucus in terms of his closeness to the political center.

That rating appears to be partly a result of Walz’s willingness to back legislation that had bipartisan or mostly Republican backing. Almost half the bills Walz sponsored in his final term in Congress originated with non-Democrats.

Walz also chose to focus on some areas that are, by their nature, not particularly partisan. GovTrack notes that one of his points of focus was “bills on agricultural issues including farm soil health.”

Walz, who served in the Army National Guard, also put a lot of emphasis on veterans’ issues. His legislative record includes sponsorship of bills intended to speed up the delivery of veterans’ benefits and to direct the secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish a registry pertaining to exposure to toxins.

His relative centrism was sometimes more controversial, however. He backed an extension of then-President George W. Bush’s tax cuts while in Congress. Even more unusually, he was among just 17 Democrats who voted to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder, an appointee of then-President Obama, in contempt of Congress in 2012. At issue was the Department of Justice’s failure to submit documents to Congress relating to Operation Fast and Furious. 

Walz’s positioning while in Congress was, to be sure, a reflection of his district. He came to Congress in 2006 by defeating a six-term Republican incumbent, Rep. Gil Gutknecht. 

Some of his reelection victories were uncomfortably tight. He ground out a 5-point victory in 2010 and, in his final House campaign in 2016, held off Republican Jim Hagedorn by less than 1 percentage point. Hagedorn won the seat two years later and held it until his death in 2022.

Walz’s overall political positioning changed markedly as governor, especially once Democrats claimed control of the state Senate in 2022. 

Last year, Walz asserted the purpose of winning elections was not to “bank political capital” but to “burn political capital and improve lives.”

That attitude — and the fact that he was presiding over a left-leaning state rather than representing a right-leaning district — fueled a succession of progressive moves.

He has opposed many restrictions on abortion. He has backed the legalization of marijuana for personal use. He signed into law a bill providing free school meals for children at public schools, regardless of means. He has also supported automatic voter registration.

Other measures Walz has backed provide more ammunition for Republican opponents in the nation’s culture wars, even as they delight liberals.

In March 2023, he signed a bill making migrants living in the country illegally eligible for driver’s licenses. He has also supported making his state’s low-income health insurance program accessible for all residents, regardless of immigration status. And he has favored so-called “sanctuary” laws where local law enforcement does not inform federal authorities of the immigration status of people they encounter.

Walz has also expanded voting rights’ for felons, basically by restoring the right to vote to people who have completed a period of incarceration, rather than requiring them to wait until their probation period is also over. Coincidentally, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld this change Wednesday.

The governor also has ordered state officials not to cooperate with subpoenas and other legal requests from elsewhere in the nation seeking to penalize gender-affirming care. Walz first enacted that policy via executive order, though similar measures were later reaffirmed by legislation.

Trump seems destined to seize on that issue, in particular.

“Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything,” Trump said of Walz on Wednesday.

That’s one battle in a much wider war — to define Tim Walz and, by extension, Harris, in a very tight White House race.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.