What did Tim Walz do in Congress? How he staked out the middle before shifting left as governor

WASHINGTON – There aren’t many things progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and now-independent Sen. Joe Manchin, who left the Democratic Party earlier this year, see eye-to-eye on.

But one is Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

That’s in part because Vice President Kamala Harris’ new running mate had a moderate track record over a dozen years in the House before he carved out a different path as a progressive governor. It's a shift the Harris campaign will likely leverage to fold in a frustrated left wing and reassure centrist voters as Democrats try to hold onto the White House.

Walz as a teenager joined the National Guard and later became a high school teacher and football coach in Mankato, Minnesota. In 2006, he beat out a six-term Republican to represent Minnesota’s rural 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House – one of the biggest upsets in the country that year.

He spent 12 years in the lower chamber, holding on to his seat amid nationwide waves of Republican wins, including former President Donald Trump's 2016 victory. But after Walz replaced retiring Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton in 2019, he took the state down a more progressive path.

As Walz takes up the Democratic Party’s VP mantle, strategists are hopeful he can help Harris appeal to Midwestern voters, including in the “Blue Wall” states of Wisconsin and Michigan.

Meanwhile, Republicans have been quick to paint him as an extreme and out-of-touch liberal.

“From proposing his own carbon-free agenda, to suggesting stricter emissions standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement shortly after the pick was announced.

Here’s what to know about Walz’s credentials in the House and the governor's mansion – and how it might translate to his vice presidential candidacy.

Staking out the middle in the House

House Veterans Affairs Ranking Member Mark Takano, D-Calif., served with Walz when the Midwesterner was the top Democrat on the committee. Takano noted that Walz was easily reelected, even in the 2010 election that brought a wave of conservatives to Capitol Hill with the Tea Party movement.

“How did Tim prevail in that tsunami?” Takano asked. “It’s because of the trust that Tim engenders, by his character and his personality and by his actions.”

Here's what those actions looked like: As a representative of a rural, conservative-leaning district, Walz staked out a position among House Democrats as a moderate member and was dubbed the 7th-most bipartisan lawmaker in the 114th Congress by the Lugar Center.

He voted against the 2008 law to bail out banks in the wake of the Great Recession and for continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. He voted to approve the landmark health care bill the Affordable Care Act , which would become a major attack point from Republicans for years afterward.

In 2012, he voted to extend tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush but later voted against the 2017 Trump-era tax bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

An avid hunter, Walz was a favorite of the National Rifle Association when he served in Congress, picking up endorsements and donations from the powerful guns rights group. (He became a supporter of stricter gun control laws after the 2018 Parkland shooting.)

Walz was among only a few dozen Democrats to support building the Keystone XL pipeline, an oil pipeline running from Canada through the western United States.

And he was one of just 17 Democrats to vote to hold former Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for disregarding a congressional subpoena. Nevertheless, Holder would go on to lead the vice presidential vetting process for Harris in which Walz emerged as the pick.

Progressive push as governor

Walz became governor in Minnesota in 2019, leading a state that voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 1976. The new job also brought a shift left in his policy positions.

His first term was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the police murder of George Floyd that kicked off massive protests in the state’s major cities. Images of those protests – which at times veered into burning and looting buildings – are likely to be a major focus for Republicans attacks. Prominent GOP officials have already said he did not move quickly enough to contain them.

He also instituted an indoor mask mandate and a hotline to report violations of the state’s COVID-19 rules, which state Republicans railed against in court.

Democrats took back full control of the statehouse at the beginning of 2023, and over the past year and a half, Walz has focused on broad progressive policies he's sure to tout on the campaign trail.

He signed a law to codify the right to abortion ; expanded voting rights for Minnesotans who are on felony supervision or probation , approved labor-backed policies such as outlawing non-compete agreements ; legalized recreational marijuana ; and passed a 20-week paid leave program that was vehemently opposed by the state’s business community.

He also signed a tax law that created a state-level child tax credit , approved free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota kids, approved background checks for all private gun sales and signed off on a mandate that Minnesotans use all carbon-free electricity sources by 2040.

Those policies, celebrated by prominent progressives, also brought about the largest budget in the state’s history. It's something allies have dubbed “ transformational ” and GOP opponents called “ unsustainable and unaffordable ” as his critics zero in on his pivot to the left from his time in Congress.

Will Walz help or hurt the Democratic ticket?

Republicans are already hopeful that Walz’s record will be easier to frame as too far to the left, especially compared with other top VP contenders like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Gov. Mark Kelly.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance on Tuesday bashed Walz's selection, calling it “more instructive for what it says about Kamala Harris that she doesn’t care about the border, she doesn’t care about crime, she doesn’t care about American energy, and most importantly she doesn’t care about the Americans who have been made to suffer under those policies.”

Democrats, meanwhile, say that Walz’s policy positions – and track records in the House and as governor – will appeal to both their base voters and independent-minded voters.

Those who critique Walz as vice president argue that she missed an opportunity to choose a candidate from a state that is on the table in the election, rather than Minnesota, which was already safely in hand for Democrats.

But “I don’t think that was the primary consideration of Kamala Harris,” Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota said. “I think she was looking at someone who could be a partner in running this overwhelming executive branch.”

Others hope he can be an effective communicator to rural and Midwestern voters with a straight-talking style.

Walz went from relative obscurity on the national scene to a top vice presidential contender in a matter of weeks, thanks in part to his approach to defending Harris on television. He was the first to focus on attacking Trump and Vance as being “weird” rather than a threat to democracy – as President Joe Biden had been. Walz's comments became a strategy quickly adopted by Harris and other Democrats.

Democratic strategist Maria Cardona predicted that Walz could help Harris hold onto “A lot of the same voters that Joe Biden was able to reach out to" when he was elected in 2020.

“He has something about him that really speaks to a lot of the voters, frankly, that the Democratic Party lost to Trump in 2016.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What did Tim Walz do in Congress? How he staked out the middle before shifting left as governor