Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced Tuesday that she has named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. The 60-year-old politician grew up in the small town of West Point, Nebraska, and taught social studies, coached football and was a union member at Mankato West High School in Minnesota before entering politics.
He won his first term in Congress in 2006 in a southern Minnesota district, drawing attention primarily from the support of military veterans. Tim Walz served in the National Guard for twenty-four years starting at age seventeen, where he achieved the rank of sergeant, one of the highest ranks in the military for enlisted personnel. Since 2019, he has been governor of Minnesota.
The names of several potential Democratic vice presidential candidates have been circulating in the press in the past few days, but Tim Walz has not been mentioned most of the time, so Kamala Harris caused a slight surprise with her announcement on Tuesday, said Tamas Magyarics on InfoRádio. He added:
His life story fits perfectly into the Democratic Party's oft-used narratives.
He spent his childhood in rather modest circumstances, and was only nineteen when his father died, so he quickly assumed enormous responsibilities in his family. The foreign policy expert stressed that he is the governor of a state that traditionally votes for the Democratic candidate in US presidential elections. However, in 2016, Donald Trump trailed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by only one and a half percentage points in Minnesota, while Joe Biden won the northern state by more than seven percentage points in 2020.
According to the professor emeritus at ELTE, Kamala Harris was unexpected, because recently there have been several potential vice presidential candidates who could bring more votes to the Democratic Party, such as Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, who is a potential vice presidential candidate. Key states have emerged, or Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, but in the end it did not fall to them to choose the Democratic presidential candidate.
According to Tamas Magiaricks, one possible argument in favor of Tim Walz's nomination for vice president was that
Democrats may be able to attract more white voters through it, especially in Midwestern states, where Republicans traditionally have a big advantage.
Based on the latest polls, the expert said: Donald Trump currently leads among white voters by 55 to 44 percent over Kamala Harris, although Joe Biden has recently fared even worse, with only 42 percent of his support among white citizens.
“Tim Walz is a politician with a great personality,” added the ELTE professor emeritus. “Like Kamala Harris, he is on the “left” of the Democratic Party, moving away from the mainstream, and has more progressive political views than Joe Biden, which may have also had a significant impact on Kamala Harris’s decision. The Democrats’ goal may be to appeal to disillusioned left-wing progressive voters, whose support is of great importance to them. Winning the support of labor unions is also a key issue from their perspective, and Tim Walz could play a prominent role in this.”
As governor, he enacted many popular measures to protect workers.
After Kamala Harris' announcement, the media behind the Democratic Party immediately began to promote Tim Walz, and there are several reports about his successes as governor, and according to Tamas Magiarics, the main question in the coming months will be to what extent he will be able to boost his image. The expert noted: Tim Walz is not really known on a national level, so the Democrats will now mostly try to make him appear in person in as many places as possible, and obviously he will have more television appearances.
Tamás Magiaricks believes that Kamala Harris and the Democrats took a big risk by making an apparent overture to left-wing sympathizers and promoting more progressive policies. Republicans have responded to this shift in direction by saying that Democrats want to pursue a left-wing agenda that is unlikely to appeal to the majority of Americans.
