“Twenty-four years in the Army National Guard. A school teacher. A champion who understands America. I can’t wait to call Tim Walz our vice-president!”
Granted, the tweet actually came from Linda Carter, the actor who played Wonder Woman on US TV from 1975 to 1979. But amid Democratic enthusiasm for Harris’s short-notice campaign to be the first female president, the source seemed fitting.
In the preceding days, as Harris considered her options, Walz, 60, was widely seen as more likely to fire up progressives than Josh Shapiro , the Pennsylvania governor, and Mark Kelly , the Arizona senator, both reported to have made the final round of interviews and deliberations.
But on Tuesday morning the Lincoln Project, a group founded by anti-Trump Republicans, also greeted the pick, tweeting an image of Walz grinning broadly while being hugged by a group of schoolchildren.
The picture was taken from a signing ceremony in which Walz made into law a Minnesota measure to guarantee free breakfast and lunch to all children regardless of income.
Writers for the Bulwark, a conservative anti-Trump site, had backed Shapiro. But soon after Walz was announced, staffers Sam Stein and Andrew Egger wrote: “As a matter of modern politics … this one shouldn’t have shocked us.
“In an era where vibes rule everything around us, Walz, by the end, was the guy riding the zeitgeist.
“The Minnesota governor’s ascension to the VP slot marks the first time that TikTok has helped choose a running mate. Walz was most assuredly not a frontrunner when this process started. He wasn’t even among the top three midwestern governors in the mix.
“But his quick ability to brand the Republican ticket as ‘weird’ earned him immediate plaudits among the Democratic faithful. His economic populist pitch, his non-coastal elite resume, and his mockery of JD Vance kept adding to the momentum.”
Such momentum for Harris has also been fueled by a plethora of organising and fundraising groups that have sprung up in the short time since Joe Biden withdrew from the race and handed the baton to his vice-president.
On Tuesday, one such group, White Dudes for Harris, called Walz “an amazing leader who delivered a powerful speech last week highlighting the importance of protecting fertility treatments like IVF and rejecting Project 2025”, the far-right plan for a second Trump administration steered by the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Many celebrants highlighted Walz’s experience outside politics, from the years before he entered the US House of Representatives and then ran for governor in Minnesota.
Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor turned MSNBC analyst, said: “I like, and am inspired by, Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s VP pick.
“He has military experience, as a sergeant/non-commissioned officer [in the US national guard]. Those of us who served know that it’s the NCOs that make it all work. He was a high-school social studies teacher and football coach.
“He’s direct, plain-spoken, and an honest, honorable man.”
Advocates for Shapiro and Kelly had pointed to their coming from battleground states, home to contests which will decide the election in November, while Walz comes from a state that has been solidly Democrat for decades.
But on Tuesday, Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, a leading polling analyst, pointed to progressive doubts about one competitor to Walz when he said: “Yes, Governor Josh Shapiro could have brought a bigger payoff (19 electoral votes) but Governor Tim Walz fills the age-old bill for VP nominees: first, do no harm.”
Elsewhere, Matthew Dowd , a former Republican operative, saluted a “smart pic by VP Harris” that he said would work to her advantage in northern battleground states.
Walz, Dowd said, would “help the entire campaign effort especially in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. As a native Michigander I can tell you Walz fits perfect in the Wolverine state”.
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