Who Is Tim Walz?

Who is Tim Walz? No seriously, who is Tim Walz? That’s the question a lot of Americans will have asked yesterday. Almost three-quarters of the country has either never heard of Kamala Harris’s VP pick or are unsure how to rate him.

But while the country came to grips with the basics—W-A-L-Z, no T, pronounced walls, not waltz, governor of Minnesota, reassuringly bushy eyebrows—the fight to define the man from Mankato was already underway. 

Walz—who reportedly surged to the front of the veepstakes by labeling J.D. Vance as “weird”—has a decidedly normal backstory: a life of steady service to his community and country. Public college, National Guard, public high school teacher, Congress, the governor’s mansion. And now the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket. 

As he’s risen in the ranks, he’s also moved to the left. Once a Democrat in a rural district who set himself apart from his party to win independent votes, today he’s a governor with a majority in the state house, a power he’s used to pass laws that protect abortion access and double down on “gender-affirming care” for minors. Today he’s a favorite of unions—and of Bernie Sanders, who came out in favor of Walz as the running mate pick over the weekend. 

Republicans, meanwhile, are breathing a sigh of relief that Harris didn’t pick popular Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (more on that in a second), and licking their lips at the prospect of taking on Walz, who they will paint as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or a progressive in a hunting cap. They will remind voters that Walz was the governor of Minnesota when Minneapolis went up in flames after the murder of George Floyd. They will air this clip of Walz’s wife saying she kept the windows open to smell the burning tires during the unrest. And they will note that Walz was an especially zealous enforcer of Covid restrictions. 

The Harris campaign, by contrast, sees Walz as someone who shores up her left flank and can communicate progressive policies to the kinds of working-class voters she needs to win back. 

Introducing her pick to America at a rally in Philadelphia yesterday, Harris called Walz “the kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having and that every kid deserves. . . the kind of coach. . . who makes people feel like they belong and then inspires them to dream big. And that’s the kind of vice president America deserves.”

My colleague Olivia Reingold was at yesterday’s rally and told me that even though the majority of attendees had only learned of Walz that morning, they were all in.

After she met a few cat ladies outside the arena (don’t sleep on that link), she spoke to Derek Lee, 52, of Northeast Philly, who told her Harris needs “someone like Walz” to win over white men: “As much as I love Michelle Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we need something different than that same energy to win. We need a don’t-take-no-crap white guy like Walz to win.”

Tywana Hamilton-West, a 47-year-old resident of South Jersey, says she just learned about Walz but is already starting to like him. “He relates to a lot of different demographics,” she told Olivia, adding that she has a son, who, like Walz, is a veteran. “I think he’ll appeal to a wide audience.”

Olivia met one attendee who had heard of Walz long before yesterday’s debut—since 2004, to be exact, when Sam Hurd, then a teenager, took a history class from Walz at Mankato West High School, where the vice presidential contender taught for a decade. 

Hurd, now a teacher himself, says that Walz wasn’t a big fan of homework or even textbooks. 

“He cared more that you showed up and took part in the discussion. He brought a lot of the C and D students validation that they mattered,” says Hurd, 35 and living in Baltimore, Maryland. “He showed them that adults want to hear them and care. He would say, ‘I want to know what you think.’ ”

He beamed, adding that it’s “exciting” that “people get to see what we see.” 

If Olivia’s reporting is anything to go by, the attendees in Pennsylvania liked what they saw—even if Walz took the spot many expected their governor to fill. Whether the rest of the country will feel the same is another matter. 

Today in The Free Press: four stories about Kamala’s pick—why she chose Walz, why she didn’t choose Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, what it says about her party, and how it will affect the election. 

Salena Zito reports that, while most Americans were surprised by the Walz pick, many Democratic insiders were not. “Walz, a father of two, is a good servant of the party whose time had come,” writes Salena. “And Shapiro may be too ambitious to accept second place.” Read her piece: “How Did Walz Win Kamala’s Veepstakes?” 

Second, Eli Lake says there’s a simple way to understand this political moment: look at who is happiest. And after Walz’s announcement, he writes, all the worst people were celebrating. People like Jamaal Bowman, the Squad congressman who lost his primary in June because of his sharp anti-Israel stance. Yesterday, Bowman posted a video of himself on X cheering on Harris’s pick, exclaiming: “It’s Walz, baby. Let’s go.” Read Eli: “All the Wrong People Are Celebrating Tim Walz.” 

Batya Ungar-Sargon feels unsettled by Kamala’s choice. The most qualified person to help the Dems win in November was Josh Shapiro, she argues, and there was only one reason he didn’t get picked. Read Batya: “America Is Ready for a Jewish Veep. The Democrats Aren’t.” 

But Joe Nocera takes a different view. There’s a lot to recommend Walz as a candidate, he argues. Walz “has a plainspoken way of laying out the issues people care about” and “avoids the whole ‘save democracy’ thing in favor of talking about things that affect people’s day-to-day lives,” he writes. Read Joe: “Tim Walz Is No Radical.” 

1. Cori Bush—Missouri congresswoman, Squad member and outspoken opponent of Israel—lost her primary yesterday to Wesley Bell, a popular black St. Louis County prosecutor, who ran to her right. (Bell is expected to easily win the general election.) Bush’s loss marks another loss for the Squad: a few weeks ago, Rep. Jamaal Bowman—who denied that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women on October 7 and has pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories—also lost his primary in New York. (A good time to revisit this Eli Lake piece.)

2. Kamala Harris continues to gain in the polls over Donald Trump. She now leads Trump in Nate Silver’s election forecast for the first time. She has also sneaked ahead of the former president in the RCP polling average and the 538 polling average. (RealClearPolitics)

3. But has the race really changed that much? Byron York offers some sangfroid on the state of the race. Yes, switching out candidates appears to have worked for the Dems, he writes, but “Harris has had two weeks of the most positive press coverage imaginable, and after that, the race is still tied.” Has the contest really been reset—or will Harris’s honeymoon period soon be over? (Washington Examiner) 

4. Now that Walz is the pick, it’s official: this is the first presidential election without someone named Bush, Clinton, or Biden on the ticket since 1976. (AP) 

5. One of the (many) things I learned about Tim Walz in the last 24 hours: he’s a sinophile who spent a year teaching in China in 1989. He and his wife got married on the fifth anniversary of Tiananmen Square (this strikes me as. . . weird). (ChinaTalk)

6. Yahya Sinwar—the October 7 mastermind who has explicitly stated that civilian Palestinian casualties are necessary to advance Hamas’s cause—has been named the terror group’s new leader after the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week. Sinwar was previously Hamas’s most senior official inside Gaza. So much for the supposed distinction between the group’s political and military wings. (AP) 

7. Meet the journalism professors who don’t understand journalism. Mike Pesca takes Margaret Sullivan, Jay Rosen, and others to task for trying to redefine the basic tenets of journalism—and urging the press to do nothing but yell about the dangers of Donald Trump day and night. (Pesca Profundities) 

8. Liberalism is under fire from both the left and the right, and has lost the confidence of the public. And yet, argues Jonathan Rauch, Western-style liberalism has proven itself to be the only system that can work on “a large scale, in many places, and over time.” (Persuasion) 

9. The last U.S. troops left Niger on Monday, abandoning a base in the West African country’s northern desert. American forces had been there to help push back against Islamist militancy in the region and the withdrawal comes “at a moment when extremist violence in West Africa is reaching record highs and Russia’s influence in the region is growing.” (Washington Post)

10. Do you have any doubts about whether Imane Khelif—the Algerian boxer who failed to pass a gender eligibility test only last year but has been cleared to participate in the Olympics—should be allowed in the ring with women? Then you’ve been duped by the “Zionist lobby,” according to the director of Algeria’s Olympic team. Khelif won the latest bout on Tuesday, and has advanced to the gold medal round in the women’s welterweight tournament. (Jewish Chronicle) 

→ What else is RFK Jr. responsible for?: For ten years, New Yorkers have been wondering what kind of weirdo would leave a mutilated bear corpse in Central Park; now, we know the answer is. . . well, pretty much exactly the kind of weirdo you’d think. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., third-party presidential candidate and black sheep of the Kennedy clan, released a video on X on Sunday revealing that he was responsible for the 2014 incident, dumping the bear and staging the scene (badly) to look like a bike accident. The account must be seen to be believed—although I should note, having grown up in the part of rural New York where much of the action allegedly took place, that I do believe it, and furthermore guarantee you that is not the first time a wealthy person LARPing as a redneck has gotten into trouble with a bear carcass.

Here’s the thing: this bear incident has been an unsolved mystery for a decade, and you just know it’s not the only story of its kind that RFK has been holding back. And so, under the circumstances, here are some other mysteries I think we should all be taking another look at:

The Montauk Monster

We already know the man likes to leave mysterious animal carcasses in public places; honestly, this one isn’t even a reach.

The Nightmare Clown Panic of 2016

What if this isn’t RFK’s first time wreaking havoc during an election year?

The Hijacking of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305

In 1971, a mysterious hijacker named D.B. Cooper stole $200,000 and jumped from the plane, never to be seen again. RFK Jr. raised $5 million and jumped off a cliff. Coincidence? Maybe. 

The Mothman

“So I was driving through West Virginia late one night after a dinner at Peter Luger’s steak house, and someone’s porch light was on. . . ”

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Look, everyone else is thinking it, so I’m just going to say it: What if there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll, but he was very, very small? —Kat Rosenfield

→ Your doctor will see you now—and ask you to vote: Doctors are for things like diagnosing your ailments, prescribing you medication—and making sure you turn out to vote, apparently. The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium reports that doctors at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute—a facility that treats patients who suffer from schizophrenia, substance abuse, depression, or bipolar disorder—are part of a national get-out-the-vote initiative called Vot-ER.

Vot-ER markets itself as a “a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to integrate civic engagement into healthcare.” But, per the Free Beacon’s reporting, behind the scenes the group seems far from “nonpartisan.” Vot-ER’s founder, Alister Martin, was a former adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, and the initiative is backed by progressive donors like the Tides Foundation and the Windward Fund. Though registering patients to vote seems to be their main initiative, Vot-ER also hosts trainings on textbook progressive causes, such as “medical racism.”

Not only does the group’s work raise questions about the increasing politicization of medicine, it threatens the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship in favor of political aims.

As Sally Satel, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale Medical School, told Sibarium: “I can’t even begin to tell you how inappropriate this is. It’s such a contamination of a physician’s role.” —Francesca Block 

→ The ‘GEN Z 3’ goes for gold: Cast your mind back to the golden age of U.S. women’s soccer, the era of Megan Rapinoe. In 2012, they won gold in London. In 2015, they won the World Cup in Canada. In 2019, they won it again in France. By the end of the 2010s, the U.S. women’s team held the record for most women’s World Cup titles of all time.

And it wasn’t just the wins that made them so compelling—it was the personalities. There was Hope Solo, the troubled goalie playing for redemption; there was forward Alex Morgan, the team’s golden girl; and there was Rapinoe, an outspoken and provocative winger with a pink pixie cut. Even if you didn’t know their games, you knew their faces. 

But then everything changed. By 2023, all but Morgan were gone, and the U.S. finished with their worst World Cup performance in history, losing to Sweden in the round of 16. A few months later, a new coach, Emma Hayes, took over and cut Morgan from the squad. The group that showed up to Paris looked nothing like the team we came to know and love.

Until, that is, we met the “Gen Z 3”—also known as the “trident”—the American frontline of Trinity Rodman, 22; Sophia Smith, 23; and Mallory Swanson, 26. The trio took over this year’s Olympics, scoring 9 of the team’s 11 goals (3 each!), and leading the team into yesterday’s semifinal against Germany. The Germans proved tough. The match was scoreless until the 95th minute, but, in the first period of extra time, Smith poked in the winning goal, sending the Americans into Saturday’s gold medal match—right back where we belong. 

Saturday’s match against Brazil will no doubt be a tough one, but if the new blood can keep up the killer offense, the gold for women’s soccer is, once again, within reach.
—Evan Gardner

What to watch today: At 10 a.m. EST, the U.S. takes on Poland in the men’s volleyball semifinal; at 2:10 p.m., Noah Lyles inches closer to a double gold in the 200-meter semifinal; and at 3:30 p.m., the U.S. women’s basketball team plays their quarterfinal against Nigeria.

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman. 

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