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HARRIS VP PICK: MINNESOTA GOV. TIM WALZ

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Vice President Kamala Harris has picked her running mate to do battle with Republican former President Donald Trump and Trump’s veep pick J.D. Vance: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
The Washington Post:

Vice President Harris has told allies that she has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate, opting for a former high school teacher and Midwestern Democrat to complete a newly assembled presidential ticket, according to three people familiar with the selection who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that is not yet public. Walz is scheduled to appear with Harris in coming days in each of the seven most competitive states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

The Hill has a series of reactions from Democrats and Republicans on Walz’s selection here.

Los Angeles Times:

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday selected as her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a moderate Democrat who when serving in Congress demonstrated the ability to work with Republican lawmakers, according to a person who was briefed on the decision.

Though popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until his recent plainspoken critique of Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance — that they are “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in eviscerating a former president known for name-calling.

“These are weird people on the other side,” Walz said in an interview with MSNBC in July. “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room.”

It was a language pivot, after years of Democrats calling Trump a threat to democracy, and the Harris campaign latched onto it, issuing a statement calling Trump “old and quite weird.”

Walz later explained that constantly calling Trump an existential threat “gives him way too much power.”

“Tim Walz would be the worst VP in history!” Trump wrote in a fundraising email after the decision was leaked Tuesday in which he attacked Walz on immigration and environmental spending.

AND:

Walz has deep rural roots, which could prove a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his upbringing in Middletown, Ohio.

Often appearing in public in T-shirts and ball caps, Walz, a former high school teacher and football coach, brings an amiable, Midwestern dad sensibility to the ticket.

[..}He said he first decided to get involved with politics in 2004 after trying to take a group of students to an appearance by then-President George W. Bush in Mankato. They were denied entry, he said, because one of the students sported a John F. Kerry sticker.

“Having just returned from military duty in Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom I wished to hear directly from the President and my students, regardless of political party, deserved to witness the historical moment of a sitting president coming to our city,” Walz wrote on Twitter, now known as X. “Above all, I was struck by how deeply divided our country was becoming that a veteran & a group of high schoolers would be turned away at the door.”

Angered by the incident, Walz volunteered for the Kerry campaign and, two years later, was elected to Congress to represent southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District. He won reelection five times.

[…]Once embraced by the National Rifle Assn., which endorsed him and gave him an “A” rating, Walz denounced the organization after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. He began endorsing gun control measures, including an assault weapons ban.

“The world’s changed,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2018. “I’ve changed.”

Walz was elected governor of Minnesota in 2018.

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