Brown walked so Walz could run

Kamala Harris never got close enough in her first presidential run to seriously consider choosing her running mate.

But the working theory behind her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was floated more than five years ago. There was just a different running mate in mind — Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown .

When Harris’ top aides at the time privately mused about the kind of partner they wanted to see on the ticket, they spoke about an avuncular, and at times rumpled white man with broad appeal across the industrial Midwest.

The ideal vice president would be someone with a proven record of winning battleground races yet also deeply credible with progressives and organized labor; someone who could lay the wood to Republicans but also could connect with her West Coast credentials via their shared warmth and genuine banter; someone who was a bit older, perhaps, and comfortable playing her No. 2.

In these admittedly premature conversations from Harris’ camp five years ago, two advisers put a name behind some of the qualities: Brown.

“They both fight for average people — the little guy,” one former Harris aide said, reflecting on an idea that didn’t even make it out of a desk drawer, let alone become part of the public consciousness. The aide was granted anonymity to speak openly about the private matter.

It may seem like the Harris-Walz pairing came out of nowhere. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is a political thoroughbred who could help deliver his state, and, presumably the nomination. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona isn’t the orator Shapiro is, but his resume is stacked , and he’s a seasoned pro at publicly playing second-fiddle to a woman. But neither combined the attributes of Brown, or, more importantly, the ones she saw in Walz.

Part of the idea at the time came from Harris’ strong rapport with Brown, and her affinity for him. That’s what made her pick of Walz, once viewed as a dark horse contender for vice president, a natural one.

Harris in her introduction speech of Walz on Tuesday said she and him “may hail from different corners of our great country, but our values are the same, and we both believe in lifting people up, not knocking them down.”

“When we look at folks, we see in our fellow Americans neighbors, not enemies," she said, a play on Walz’s folksy way of talking about “community.” A second close ally of Harris who was aware of the Brown musings in 2019 said both “really know the language” of working-class Americans. On Republicans, the person said of Walz, “he has their number. He can call them out on their bullshit.”

There are of course differences between Walz, a military veteran, teacher and coach in addition to his time serving in the House, and Brown, the Ivy League-educated longtime pol who taught some college classes earlier in his career.

There’s a similarity, however, in the way both Walz and Brown summarily reject Republican talking points. While Brown riffs about Democrats being the real party of working men and women — championing higher wages, better benefits and the dignity of laborers in America — Walz has seized on the idea that it’s the Democrats who actually represent “family values” via their support of expanded child care, family leave and free school lunch.

As governor, Walz passed universal background checks on guns, legalized recreational marijuana and put his state on a path to 100 percent clean energy by 2040. He impressed Harris’ team with his energetic barnstorming of state fairs and then Harris herself with his professed lack of political ambition beyond serving as her vice president.

The resulting ticket also has similarities to the one Harris ran — and won on as the No. 2 — in 2020, but with her at the top and Walz trying to hold onto the Biden coalition. But it’s even more amplified — with the Harris campaign as part of its rollout emphasizing his hunting and fishing hobbies and even hawking a camo Harris-Walz hat as part of its new merchandise drop.

On a radio program in Harris’ native San Francisco Bay Area, a former longtime Walz staffer from his time on Capitol Hill called in on Tuesday morning to remind listeners that his old boss co-chaired the Congressional Sportsman’s Caucus. In Walz, Harris picked a guy who not only knows his way around a carburetor but once had an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. He split with the NRA after the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Then there’s the matter of personal rapport, or warmth, as longtime Harris associates put it. She doesn’t get along so well with what one longtime aide described as “cold fish.” She’s always been fond of teachers and mentors — and talked up how Walz shaped young people in Minnesota, including vouching for a gay-straight alliance and leading a football team to glory.

To Harris, Walz was simply “Coach.”