Op-Ed
Oct 4, 2024, 12:36 PM CST
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Tim Walz’s rise is about more than being an endearing Midwestern dad. There’s policy achievements and a sense of urgency at the core of his ascent, and that’s exactly what Democrats need right now.
This is a story about the Midwest.
It was the night of Aug. 21 and I was leaving the United Center in Chicago where I was covering the Democratic National Convention, hoping the general direction I was going would lead me to my AirBnB. I was fairly confused — discombobulated even — but I kept walking, through the flood of people catching ride-shares and buses, east to where I found myself in a quiet, charming neighborhood, just outside the bustling chaos of the convention’s security perimeter. I searched for public transit options nearby, but the maps app on my phone said I was only about a 25-minute walk from where I was going and that seemed close enough to hoof it. A good walk could help me collect my thoughts after a whirlwind day, after all.
Day 3 of the DNC had just come to a close, and Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota governor, had just finished delivering the evening’s keynote speech, finishing with a rousing call to action to “leave it all on the field” in front of an arena full of attendees holding “COACH WALZ” placards. He was playing the role of “happy warrior” in the campaign, and playing it remarkably well.
It was my second time seeing Walz speak in as many days. The evening prior, he was in Milwaukee, hosting a rally up the road at Fiserv Forum with Kamala Harris. It was a vision of a surging campaign. Here were two candidates rallying a packed arena in a critical swing state, coinciding with the convention’s roll-call vote, where the newly minted Democratic nominee and her running mate would effectively sell out two arenas in one night.
As I walked, I thought about Tim Walz, and I thought about those two speeches. I thought about the cut-through-the-noise simplicity of his message and the refreshing energy he’d brought to the ticket — the exact type of plainspoken Midwestern voice that Democrats have long needed to put front and center in their party after years over-relying on those from the coasts.
It was then that a young couple on the street stopped me, noticing the DNC credentials I still had on around my neck. They were waiting outside to see if the convention motorcade would go by their house. They wanted to see Tim Walz.
We talked for a bit and I learned that the woman was from Minnesota, was a huge fan of the state’s governor and was thrilled he’d been the selection for the ticket. I told them I was from Milwaukee and we talked about the rally from the day before. I showed them a video I took of the reaction from the crowd when Walz took the stage. We talked about the speech Walz had just delivered and the touching moment between the VP candidate on stage and his son Gus in the audience and the emotional reaction I’d witnessed from delegates on the convention floor as Walz discussed his family’s fertility struggles. Eventually, we heard the sirens of the motorcade as it sped off in a different direction, but before I returned to my walk back, I asked them if the directions I had were the best way to get where I was going. The two looked at each other and nodded, looked back at me and asked, “Can we give you a ride?”
Not only was this a kind gesture — indicative of the type of welcoming hospitality the people of Chicago showed all week — it seemed fitting that it came from a conversation about Tim Walz.
Because about an hour or so before, Tim Walz was on stage at the United Center, saying things like this:
“Growing up in a small town, you learn how to take care of each other. That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do—but they’re your neighbors, and you look out for them, and they look out for you. Everybody belongs, and everybody has a responsibility to contribute.”
The let’s help each other out-type of message Walz has been conveying on the campaign trail is simple, but powerful. In many ways, it’s the perfect antitote to the cruelty-is-the-point viciousness of the Trump era.
“That’s what this is all about,” Walz said in his convention speech, “the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other, and to the future that we’re building together — in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want.”
The stump speech lines have become canon. On matters of personal and reproductive freedom, the Tim Walz “golden rule” is to “mind your own damn business.” In talking about Project 2025, the former high school football coach says “when somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it.” A now-famous interview on “Morning Joe” as he was being vetted for the VP role, his characterization of Donald Trump and JD Vance boiled down to saying, “These guys are just weird.”
The viral Midwestern Dad content, too, has been part of the growing Walz lore. From talking about the importance of having clean gutters to sharing his love of “white guy tacos” to sharing his Culver’s order (with Chad Holmes on the Civic Media network!) to all of the unearthed clips of him fixing cars or playing with dogs or driving with his daughter, each hit has been a home run.
The style, so to speak, of Tim Walz on the campaign trail might ring hollow, though, if not for being backed up by some bonafide political substance. And that’s where the Tim Walz appeal goes well beyond an aw, shucks stump speech line or goofy Midwestern dad content for social media. There is genuine policy success and achievement at the core of Walz’s rise to the national scene, and an urgency by which this was accomplished.
What happened in Minnesota following his re-election in 2022 — which came along with the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party winning a one-seat legislative majority in the Minnesota State Senate (think that might be relevant for Wisconsin right about now?) — is the type of platform that can and should be taken to the national stage.
This flurry of activity and progressive legislation that passed under the leadership of Walz and the DFL’s slim legislative majority, its first Democratic trifecta in nearly a decade, was later dubbed the “Minnesota Miracle.” The Minneapolis Star-Tribune would characterize it as “one of the most consequential sessions in state history.”
“When the dust settles on this, there’s little doubt that this is probably the most productive session in Minnesota history,” Walz is quoted saying in that piece. “It’s also the most supportive of middle class and working people that we’ve ever seen.”
This “Minnesota Miracle” stands as an achievement not just in the type of legislation being passed, but through the pace by which they moved from the legislature to the governor’s desk in the early months of 2023. Democrats won the majority in November and hit the gas in January, and by May, had a list of accomplishments to celebrate, and Walz was spiking the football.
“You might have noticed, things are getting done around here,” Walz said, per the Minn Post. “You would come here and you’d have a list of things that were well thought out and would improve people’s lives, and they would treat it like a wish list ‘Isn’t that nice. Isn’t that cute.’ Those days are over. That wish list is a to-do list and we’re checking it off.”
Some of the policies passed from that to-do list – which we watched with envy next door in Wisconsin — included:
- Codifying abortion access as a “fundamental right”
- Increasing public education funding by nearly $2.3 billion
- Enacting a new paid family and medical leave program that would give workers up to 12 weeks off to care for a newborn or a sick family member, and also expanding paid sick leave
- Banning noncompete agreements
- Requiring pay transparency in job postings
- Legalizing recreational marijuana
- Creating a first-in-the-nation board to set minimum pay and benefits for workers at nursing homes
- Approving nearly $1.3 billion for child care and early learning, including a new $316 million grant program to make pandemic-era relief permanent
- Restoring voting rights for people who have completed their prison terms
- Expanding voting rights, including automatic voter registration and growing options for voting by mail
- Approving $1 billion for affordable housing
- Passing new gun violence prevention initiatives in the form of a “red flag” law and expanded background checks
- Adopting new phonics-based reading curricula
- Putting $2.6 billion into a new infrastructure plan, the largest in state history
- Moving to 100% carbon-free energy by 2040 and enacting permitting reform to streamline the process
- Protecting rights of people in the LGBTQ community to access gender-affirming health care
- Sending more money to low- and middle-income families with targeted tax child credit of $1,750
The list goes on. And perhaps the policy Walz came to be known for most that he signed into law during this session was the bill providing free school breakfast and lunch to all children in Minnesota schools. The bill signing for this became Walz’s signature moment, with the former social studies teacher putting pen to paper surrounded by a room full of exuberant children who hugged the governor as he signed the legislation.
Speaking at a press conference shortly after the bill was signed, Walz pushed back on Republican criticism of the free school meals policy, saying “The haves and the have-nots in the school lunch room is not a necessary thing. Just feed our children.”
Here, Walz is tapping into something here that could really resonate, removing the overwrought complexity that can come with Democratic policies and doing some direct, universal good in a simple way that cuts through the noise — “just feed our children.” This type of approach is audacious in its simplicity and in its urgency. Democrats have a tendency to over-complicate these types of policies, be it through means testing or some sort of byzantine maze of tax credits and administrative burden. It’s all too often these too poll-tested, consultant-ified responses result in something too precious, too careful. Walz is forging a path that Democrats should follow.
Perhaps they are. Just under 18 months after signing the free school meals bill at Webster Elementary in northeast Minneapolis, Walz was on stage at the DNC talking about that very same bill, and the whole convention was cheering for free school meals.
As far as vice presidential selections go, Kamala Harris’ choice of Walz as her running mate is already proving to be a grand-slam decision. In Wisconsin, he’s polling better than anyone on either ticket. The Democratic Party has long needed to prioritize leaders and issues away from the coasts in ways they simply have not in recent years, and in Tim Walz, they’ve found a leader to embody that type of shift.
But it’s not just because he knows how to get a rebate at Menard’s or clean your car’s air filter. It’s because he’s been a leader during an extraordinary moment of achievement in his home state, he’s backing the types of pragmatic progressive policy actions that America should be taking and perhaps more importantly than any of this, he’s not going to sit back when a moment of opportunity arises. He’s going to get things done.
Following the 2023 legislative session that saw this avalanche of policy achievement, Walz said in a tweet, “Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital – you win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”
Win elections, get things done, improve people’s lives. It’s simple. And in a party that sometimes can’t get out of its own way, there’s a certain bravery in this simplicity. But Walz is reminding us that maybe things don’t need to be so complicated after all. Help your neighbor. Mind your business. Leave it all on the field. Offer to give someone a ride home.
Weeks after getting that ride home, I would be there for another Walz speech, this time at Laborfest in Milwaukee. He was again talking about minding your own business and helping your neighbor, talking about workers’ rights and the power of a union. About building the middle class, about signing “one of the biggest and best pro-worker packages in Minnesota history.” He talked about what Minnesota did with a one-vote advantage in the Senate — nodding to what Wisconsin had the opportunity to do with new maps. He talked about protecting Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act, and a “wish for every American to have a defined benefit pension plan,” a big applause line among the union crowd. He also talked about the future.
Looking ahead to the fall election with he and Harris against Trump and Vance, he said, “We get a rare opportunity, too, to put an end to that divisiveness, to put it behind us, (toward) a future where we work together.”
What’s emerging as one of the most significant factors in this campaign is the opportunity to turn the page. Harris talked about this substantively in her joint interview with Walz in late August, and has been making this point extensively on the campaign trail. The “We’re not going back” chants have become a signature of her rallies.
The open question, then, is what the story would be once that page is turned — if she does manage to defeat Trump in the election this fall. Perhaps through her selection of Walz as a running mate, we are seeing what could prove to be the outline of what the next chapter might look like.
We can hope that this next chapter for the nation looks like the one just written by Tim Walz and Democrats in Minnesota.
This column is from The Recombobulation Area, a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award–winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media. Subscribe here.
