Why Pelosi and other House Dems were privately pushing Walz

House Democrats have often chafed at President Joe Biden’s favoritism for the Senate. So, when they pushed Tim Walz for vice president, they had more than ideology on their minds — they wanted one of their own.

House Democrats have grumbled for years that Biden doesn’t really understand their chamber, a complaint compounded by the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris was also a former Senate fixture. Even while Democratic lawmakers were happy to pass major legislative priorities like the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act during Biden’s tenure, the process often left them feeling run over.

So some House Democrats privately lobbied Harris’ camp to pick Walz, wanting to see someone on the ticket who truly understood the so-called lower chamber. While other candidates like Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) also had some House Democratic backers, many of them saw Walz, who served 12 years in the House and counts strong allies among both centrists and progressives, as a potentially perfect fit.

“I used to tease [Biden] a lot. I said: ‘Man, you know you’re too senatorial in your speech making. You gotta learn to do like we do in the House,” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a top Biden ally, said in a brief interview. “We do one-minute speeches in the House. So we know how to get to the point right away.’”

“If you noticed, Walz is very good at getting to the point right away,” Clyburn quipped.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was perhaps the most high-profile official in a behind-the-scenes House Democratic campaign to encourage Harris to pick Walz as her running mate, but the effort spanned the caucus’ ideological spectrum. He got help from Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), who leads the New Democrat Coalition, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who leads the Progressive Caucus, plus dozens in between.

“The point is that the Vice President Harris, by selecting Tim Walz, doesn't have to have a lot of these relationships in the House created because he already has them,” said Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), who served with Walz.

There was another consideration for current House members: improving their own chances of recapturing the majority. Walz’s former colleagues also pitched him as someone who could calm battleground Democrats’ concerns that Harris, a former West Coast senator with few ties to moderate coalitions, was poised to do even worse than Biden with white, blue-collar voters in must-win Midwest and Rust Belt states.

Walz was elected in the George W. Bush-blowback election of 2006, the same one that made Pelosi the first female speaker, as Democrats picked up surprise wins in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Kentucky. After voting for the Affordable Care Act, he then survived the 2010 GOP wave in Congress and hung onto his rural, swing district for 12 years, including when Trump won it by 15 percentage points in 2016.

“I know that he understands our world,” said Kuster, who leads the centrist New Democrat Coalition and, like Walz, flipped a red seat when she came to Congress.

The New Hampshire Democrat spent the morning of Walz’s announcement talking to an array of battleground Democratic candidates who were already gaming out how to bring the vice-presidential candidate to their own swing districts before November.

Several House Democrats had been in touch with the Harris campaign before the pick. Harris’ vetting team called Walz’s former House colleagues to inquire about his record and temperament, according to two people familiar with the conversations, who were granted anonymity to discuss the private matter. Walz allies knew Pelosi was advocating behind the scenes for him, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Members of Harris’ circle had raised concerns about whether she would be compatible with Walz, who they noted was known during his House tenure to be somewhat gruff and not afraid to publicly spar with colleagues as a red-district Democrat.

While progressives were the ones more publicly pushing Walz as Harris’ running mate, centrists saw him as primarily their ally. Those members argue he wasn’t an ideological champion for the far left, but rather a savvy operator who understood what played well in his district.

While he didn’t belong to any ideological groups in the House, he had been in the process of joining the centrist New Democrats when he left, according to one person familiar with the effort. Socially, he was liberal — pro-abortion rights, pro-union and pro-LGBTQ+ rights — and he was co-chair of the sportsmen caucus.

“I would not pigeonhole Tim Walz,” said former Rep. Filemón Vela (D-Texas), who was good friends with Walz when they served on the House Agriculture committee.

“I always found Tim to be very independent. ... The reason that Nancy [Pelosi] has such a great deal of respect for him is because she knows that whenever there were situations that he did disagree with her, that he was also respectful about it.”

While Walz hasn’t served in the House for six years, plenty of his former colleagues are still there and remember his self-deprecating jokes, his speedy morning jogs and his Minnesotan-themed gifts to members on his committee, including a heavy woolen blanket one year. He and his wife, Gwen Walz, both have long-running ties to the House: One of his wife’s closest friends is former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s husband, Randy Florke, who specializes in farmhouse-style interior design.

Several Democrats still mourn his absence from a massive group chat of current and former House members, which Walz ultimately left after he became governor in 2019, according to two people familiar with the discussions. That was due to his state’s laws, which made his personal devices subject to public records requests, one of those people said.

Walz’s former colleagues described him as Minnesota nice meets Midwestern practical. They also said he was someone who could push back on GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance and Trumpism in general.

“He’s just a fun, lovable, dad, coach that’s going to connect to people,” said former Rep. Tim Ryan, who served with Walz in the House and lost the Ohio Senate race to Vance two years ago. “I think he’s who JD Vance wants to be, who he tries to be."

In Congress, Walz belonged to two of the — arguably — least exciting but most productive committees: Veterans Affairs and Agriculture, which were both critical in his district.

"He was a true ally to Speaker Pelosi,” said former Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), who shared a Capitol Hill apartment with Walz when the two were newly elected members from competitive districts. He recalled Walz’s partnership in the fight to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the post-9/11 GI bill, hailing his ability “to reach across the aisle to move a progressive agenda forward."

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who competed against Walz for the top spot on the Veterans Affairs Committee but later befriended him, said the Minnesota Democrat would be able to draw on his relationships with House colleagues who’d since risen through the ranks.

“He's also battle tested in terms of governing. As governor, he worked those relationships, but he also comes to this job with enormous goodwill from colleagues that have only become more senior, like me,” he said.

Former Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), who worked closely with him in the House and is a member of that massive House group chat, said Walz doesn’t “waste time on pollyanna things.” As for the GOP attacks of Walz as a radical liberal, Yarmuth said he could only laugh at them.

“Now he has taken some positions ... that some consider liberal, but if you think about paid family leave, recreational marijuana, those are 70 percent or higher popular issues. You can't paint them as being extreme when they have overwhelming majority support in the country,” Yarmuth said.