Well, it’s finally a race. On Tuesday, Kamala Harris selected progressive Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate in what has become one of the most exciting presidential campaign sprints in modern history. The Harris-Walz campaign now has just 89 days to take its show on the road before voters head to the ballot box on Nov. 5.
Harris’ choice also did the impossible, uniting progressive and conservative lawmakers in Washington. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hailed Walz as an “excellent decision” and a leader who “won’t back down under tight odds.” Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) — no friend of the left — wrote on X that he could “think of no one better than Governor Walz to help bring our country closer together.”
Pundits and political journalists framed Harris’s choice as a safe bet compared to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who found himself weighed down in recent days with a spate of unflattering headlines. But in selecting Walz, Harris has done more than just unify her party ahead of a major election. She’s found a running mate Republicans can’t seem to hit.
In a time when many Midwestern and Rust Belt voters are abandoning their ancestral loyalty to the Democratic Party in favor of Trumpian populism, Walz represents a vision of the Democratic Party that harkens back to its core farmer-labor progressivism. He’s built a political legacy by winning over exactly the voters Trump needs in November. That’s a nightmare for a GOP that has wrapped itself in working class rhetoric while coddling the world’s richest and most powerful business tycoons.
To her credit, Harris’ decision seemed once again to catch the Trump campaign unprepared. In a hastily-drafted statement bashing her pick, the Trump campaign chose the baffling tack of implying that Walz — a lifelong Midwesterner, teacher and veteran — was actually a “West Coast wannabe” who dreamed of turning Minnesota into California. That message is unlikely to stick on Walz, who may be the least likely Democratic governor in America to fit the mold of a Hollywood-obsessed radical politician.
Walz is mostly known for chowing down at Minnesota’s State Fair Food Parade in vintage cars he’s worked on himself. He also built up a respected moderate voting record during his time in the House — so moderate, in fact, that Walz sits almost exactly in the center of his Democratic and Republican colleagues during his tenure in Congress. In an era of often vicious polarization, Walz found himself with few critics and plenty of friends among the Republican caucus. So much for portraying Walz as a bomb-throwing radical lefty.
As governor, Walz has also been strategic in his progressive priorities. He championed broadly popular proposals that often received bipartisan legislative support, including enacting universal free school meals, expanding paid family and medical leave, and passing universal background checks for gun purchases. A hunter and gun owner himself, Walz found a path to enacting serious gun safety reforms by reminding gun-owning Minnesotans that the NRA has left them behind in its quest to value firearms over human lives.
“We can’t turn on the TV and have these things happen,” Walz said in 2017. “The NRA you see now is not the NRA when they were teaching us gun safety classes when we were growing up. It’s been a clear change from their position for advocating for responsible gun ownership to a position that is extreme and unhelpful to the conversation.”
It’s a message that sounded like common sense to plenty of rural Minnesota hunters and sport shooters.
Harris’ vice presidential pick is almost certain to get under JD Vance’s skin, too. Vance has tried, with minimal success, to paint himself as a working class hero (despite being one of America’s preeminent tech bros) and a child of rural Appalachia (despite not being from there). As a former high school football coach, a teacher and later a member of Congress, Walz has actually served the kinds of rural communities Vance pretends to be from. He speaks the language and understands the values in a way that can’t be faked. No wonder Trump and Vance are working overtime to try and minimize Walz’s down-home bona fides.
The bigger question is whether Vance will risk his delicately-assembled public persona in a head-to-head debate with Walz. Trump’s campaign has in theory committed to a vice presidential debate, but quickly cast doubt on those plans when Joe Biden exited the race last month. Since then, Trump has repeatedly ducked calls for a debate anywhere except on friendly Fox News, likely reasoning that his campaign can hardly afford a major fumble this close to Election Day. It doesn’t sound like Trump is very confident in his running mate’s debating prowess.
If Harris’s plan was to keep Republicans on the defensive as the presidential contest heats up, her choice of Walz was a clear success. By selecting a principled leader to contrast against the moral vapidity of the Trump campaign, Harris has once again offered voters a vision of a brighter, better future. That will matter to America’s exhausted voters.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.