Students from Webster Elementary School in northeast Minneapolis hugged Gov. Tim Walz after he signed a bill on March 17, 2023, providing free breakfast and lunch to Minnesota students. (Photo by Michelle Griffith | Minnesota Reformer)
The Tim Walz I know will likely be the same one most people will get to know during what will be an intense 90 or so days till Election 2024.
As luck, fate or life would have it: I was there on the day the a squarish, plainspoken football coach from Mankato made the audacious claim that he would run against a well-heeled, button-down, mostly inoffensive Republican incumbent Congressman Gil Gutknecht, a multi-term politician who looked the part, but had the personal charm of cooling coffee in a styrofoam cup. Gutknecht passed for the same kind of slick-schtick politician that could charm little old ladies then put on some tough talk for the business-suit crowd. Ultimately, some of the same scandals that embroiled former Montana Sen. Conrad Burns also damaged Gutknecht.
More than anything, when put against the straightforward, no-nonsense of Walz, Gutknecht looked like a used car salesman.
Back in the days when local newspapers, like the Winona Daily News, which is still owned by Lee Enterprises, had enough staff to do such things even at their smaller dailies, we made the decision to embed a reporter and photographer with the upstart Walz because there was something so earnest about his approach. He didn’t just work crowds, he hustled — knocking on doors, speaking at cafes and reminding mostly agricultural communities that liberal values were just as simple as taking care of your neighbors.
He would stop by the newspaper offices in Carhartts or a T-shirt. He followed local football scores, and Winona’s (at the time) terrible losing streak. And, he talked credibly about his time in the military and the strain it put on his family. Long before he even became the governor of Minnesota, I’d tell folks in Montana, “There’s this guy in Minnesota who reminds me a lot of Jon Tester … comes to the office in jeans, criticizes Obama …”
You know the rest of the story.
But what you may not know is that even after I left southern Minnesota for Wyoming and then later back home to Montana, he would reach out, or a staffer would.
The lesson of Tim Walz in politics is that you can never underestimate the power of being authentic. Walz was an educator, a football coach, a serving member of the military, and was down-to-earth. When we’d criticize one of his policies, he was unfailingly open to the possibility he may be wrong — surprising in itself. And he wouldn’t be afraid to stand firm in his beliefs, explaining why he may be right.
On Tuesday morning, as news of Walz’s selection as Kamala Harris’ vice-presidential pick broke, different clips of Walz were predictably going viral, one where a television journalist asked Walz what was the most average thing he’d done recently. He responded, “Going to Menard’s, getting a furnace filter.”
Though I haven’t spoken to Walz since he took over the reins as governor of Minnesota, I thought, “Still the same.”
Part of Walz’s appeal is that he is the opposite of guys like Donald Trump: He is grass-roots connected to the realities that most people face. He doesn’t own a golf resort or several.
But when he started, people assumed he was a sacrificial lamb in a reliably red, conservative-tilting southern Minnesota congressional district. Yet underestimating him is part of his superpower. He is able to speak plainly, even to people who may believe he has nothing to say to them.
He was always able to reduce esoteric or wonky issues into a straightforward political proposition. Recently, I heard him say that no one sitting at a bar in Racine, Wisconsin, was saying, “You know what the problem with America is? Having ‘Animal Farm’ in the local public library.”
Unsurprisingly, I have been to bars in Wisconsin. It’s hard to see a literary club breaking out, although I once nearly came to blows with a poet in a Minnesotan bar, but that was nothing more than an argument about post-modern symbolism and my undying love of Grain Belt Beer.
At a time when many politicians have awakened an awareness about how truly weird the right has become, Walz is remarkably normal. He was a teacher; likes football; drinks Diet Mountain Dew; has to change the furnace filters; and knows the best bagged candy deals likely come from Fleet Farm (that’s Minnesotan for Shipton’s or Western Ranch Supply).
Walz also has been a case study in confronting that which other Democrats and liberals regarded as kryptonite — charges and allegations that anyone progressive is nothing more than a socialist, communist, or now, a Marxist. Despite those three labels’ important political differences, Walz hasn’t gotten flummoxed by the charges. Instead, he’s said that if by taking care of neighbors, the elderly, building roads and fixing schools is considered any of those things, then maybe; but, really that’s what Americans do to not just make America great, but to keep it that way.
If Montana couldn’t look at the Harris campaign and see glimmers of itself before, it can now.
Most Popular
Comments / 0