Tim Walz brings small-town gusto to DNC stage
CHICAGO — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s Midwestern charm had already won over the crowd at the Democratic National Convention before he walked onto the stage Wednesday night to accept the party’s nomination for vice president.
His mission was to appeal to a much larger, national audience, most of whom had no idea who he was.
Mr. Walz, 60, was selected two weeks ago by Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as her running mate. His selection was aimed at winning over working-class voters in the critical battleground states that will determine who wins the presidential election.
Mr. Walz’s speech, which capped off the convention’s third-day programming dedicated to “ordinary Americans,” was meant to introduce himself to the nation as equally ordinary.
Accompanied by the John Cougar Mellencamp song “Small Town” as he walked out, he kicked off his speech talking about growing up in rural Nebraska.
“Growing up in a small town like that, you learn how to take care of each other,” he said. “The 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.”
Ahead of Mr. Walz’s remarks, members of the 1999 high school football team — now a group of middle aged men — walked on to the stage to the school’s fight song. Attendees held signs that said “Coach Walz” to underscore his regular-guy roots.
He shared the story of his wife, Gwen and him trying to conceive before turning to in vitro fertilization tying the experience to Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights.
In a compact speech that lasted less than 20 minutes, he reminded the crowd that he’s a hunter who supports the Second Amendment but also a dad who believes in stricter firearm laws.
Mr. Walz slammed the Trump platform as “wrong and dangerous.”
“It’s an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need. Is it weird? Absolutely,” he said in a callback to his labeling of Republicans “weird,” which made him a viral superstar.
Delegates are thrilled with the nominee, and many sported Walz-Harris camouflage hats, which have come to symbolize the party’s hope that he can lure the kinds of voters who have shunned the party in recent election cycles.
“I love that guy,” said Javier Paz, a Texas delegate. “The country feels comfortable with him because he’s a regular guy. He’s a football coach. He’s had a great record in Minnesota.”
Mr. Walz’s speech was intended to introduce his “small-town values” and Midwestern folksiness to voters beyond the audience in Chicago’s United Center.
A former football coach, teacher and retired Army National Guard master sergeant, Mr. Walz is on the ticket to win over people who might otherwise be turned off by coastal Democrats.
Mr. Walz has pitched himself as someone who would rather be landing a walleye, Minnesota’s official state fish, than mixing an arugula salad.
His speech at the DNC was many Americans’ first glimpse of Ms. Harris’ running mate.
Recent polls showed nearly three-quarters of Americans had never heard of him and most voters said they didn’t know enough about him.
Delegates said they are familiar with his record as a congressman and governor and they like what they see.
Mr. Paz said he has been so impressed that he wants to form a presidential committee for Mr. Walz to run in 2032, when he will be 68, after eight years of a Harris administration.
While Mr. Walz served as a congressman from Minnesota, he led the fight to create the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which significantly increased education benefits for veterans.
Despite serving in Congress for 12 years and five years as Minnesota’s governor, Mr. Walz lacks a significant national profile. That changed when he made headlines and a viral video clip by labeling former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, as “weird.”
Even before Wednesday night’s speech, Democrats have seized on that word and used it relentlessly to mock the Trump campaign.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Walz has tried to charm voters with his folksy personality and talk of Midwestern values.
It has also been a rough turn in the national spotlight with fresh scrutiny of his military record and evidence that he exaggerated his 24 years of service in the Minnesota National Guard by falsely suggesting he served in combat and misstating his rank.
Mr. Vance, who served in the Marines and was deployed to Iraq in 2005, has accused Mr. Walz of “stolen valor.” He said Mr. Walz falsely claimed that he fought in a war and retired from his Army National Guard as it prepared to deploy to Iraq.
Democrats dismissed the criticism, though the Harris campaign had to tweak Mr. Walz’s biography on the website that had repeated his longtime public claim of an inflated rank when he retired from the National Guard.
Sherry Strothers, a delegate from Nevada who served in the Navy, called the allegations “an egregious slap in the face” to all veterans.
Ms. Harris is hoping the mix of working-class appeal and liberal track record will shore up her base and appeal to independents across the Midwestern battleground states.
A Nebraska native, Mr. Walz was a high school social studies teacher and football coach in Mankato, Minnesota, about 80 miles south of Minneapolis.
During his time as a high school teacher, Mr. Walz was the faculty adviser for the school’s first gay-straight alliance chapter in 1999.
Mr. Paz, who is an LGBTQ delegate, said Mr. Walz’s outreach to the LGBTQ community was courageous.
“It was huge,” he said. “If there was a teacher at my high school that would have been as brave as Tim Walz, I wouldn’t have had to come out at 34. This is a leader.”
Mr. Walz was a relative centrist during his time in the House. He received high marks from the National Rifle Association and was frequently ranked among the most bipartisan members of Congress. More than half the bills he co-sponsored were introduced by Republicans.
An avid hunter, Mr. Walz was an NRA darling while in Congress and earned an endorsement and donations from the powerful gun lobby.
After the February 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, however, Mr. Walz began championing firearms restrictions.
He has spoken out in favor of an assault weapons ban — a position he shares with Ms. Harris.
During his time in the governor’s mansion, Mr. Walz has moved further to the political left. He signed bills tightening gun restrictions, legalizing recreational marijuana, expanding abortion access and placing new taxes on corporations operating in the state.
He also raised taxes at a time when other governors were lowering them.