Teachers swoon over Walz joining Democratic ticket

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the first former school teacher to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket in 50 years, brings a long resume on education issues to his new role as a vice presidential candidate.

Walz famously signed into law free school lunches for every student in the state and helped enact major budget increases for schools, moves that came decades after he coached a high school football team to a state championship and helped start his school’s gay-straight alliance.

“He’s a very strong supporter of public education, and that probably starts with his identity as a former teacher,” said Dan Hoefrenning, a professor of political science at St. Olaf College. “He begins as a teacher, and I think teachers are going to feel like they have a good, good colleague on the ticket.”

“I think for teachers, Walz is probably as good as it gets,” he added.

In the first 24 hours since Vice President Harris announced Walz as her running mate, her team raised some $36 million, her deputy campaign manager said, adding that the top profession among the donors was teachers.

Walz graduated high school in 1982, before enlisting in the Army National Guard. He got his bachelor of science in social science in 1989 and went abroad to teach in China for a year before returning to Minnesota to become a social studies teacher and a football coach at Mankato West High School.

“And supervised the lunchroom for 20 years,” the governor said on X last month. “You do not leave that job with a full head of hair. Trust me.”

He was asked to sponsor a gay-straight alliance at the school by students in the 1990s, no small request for a rural school at the time.

“It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz said, according to the Star Tribune.

It was at Mankato West he met his now wife, Gwen Whipple.

“They met teaching at the same public school, and education has been a really important part of what the first lady, Gwen Walz, has been focused on in her time since Tim Walz has become the governor,” said Tim Lynch, a political science professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

“Something else that, I think, is worth kind of noting is they have a child who’s still in high school, and their youngest child is in the local St. Paul Public School District. So, I think that that’s something that we don’t always see from national candidates,” Lynch added.

In 2006, Walz ran for the House, flipping a Republican-held seat that he then held until running for governor in 2018 on a “One Minnesota” platform in an attempt to unite the state’s rural and urban regions.

“He had, during his first term, Walz had a divided government, so getting things passed was pretty difficult. However, following this last term, most recently, he had a trifecta. And so, just in the last two or three years or so, he’s really been able to pass a pretty aggressive and comprehensive agenda rooted in this idea that he said he wants to make Minnesota the best state in the country for kids, and so he’s done a lot of work in that regard,” said Ryan Dawkins, political science professor at Carleton College.

In 2022, Walz signed a law giving free school lunches to every student in the state. He also raised the education budget in the state by $2.2 billion, a 10 percent increase.

Other significant wins for the governor included a college financial aid program for households making less than $80,000 to have their school expenses covered for in-state institutions and the signing of a science of reading READ Act.

Republicans have been trying out the nickname “Tampon Tim” in response to Walz signing legislation mandating free menstrual products in all public school bathrooms.

The long record of education wins from Walz has won him easy support with national teacher unions and education groups.

“Governor Walz being a fellow teacher makes a huge difference. He understands it. He has worked with students and families and parents and communities, and he has advocated as a union member. He’s advocated for the funding, the support, the resources our students need, as well as the salaries and working conditions and respect as professionals and educators need. And he’s done it from a place of understanding. He truly understands that public education is the foundation of our democracy,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.

When asked what it means for teachers to see one of their own elevated to such a high position, Pringle said, “If you could see me, I’m smiling now. That’s exactly what our teachers and bus drivers and counselors and nurses and secretaries who work in our school and with our parents every day are doing. I mean, our educators across the country are smiling.”

“We are ready to go. We are fired up. We are doing everything we can,” Pringle said. “Three million members, we will make the difference in this election.”