Who is Tim Walz?

The path from a centrist from a “red” district to an ultra-liberal governor.

Tim Walz is 60 years old. He was born in Nebraska. Minnesota, where he is now governor, is his wife’s home state. Walz served in the National Guard, worked in manufacturing, studied, and then became a teacher himself…

Before entering politics, there is an interesting episode in his biography. In 1989, he participated in a joint program between Harvard and the State Department (possibly the CIA) called World Teach. Under this program, young teachers from the United States were sent to different countries for a year to “transfer advanced experience.” So Walz was in China, just in the year when the events occurred that ended with the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square.

In 2004, Tim Walz ran for John Kerry, who was unsuccessful in his campaign to defeat George W. Bush, who was reelected for a second term. He was noticed and pushed into politics.

In 2006, he was elected to Congress for the first time, and it was a rather remarkable election. Walz managed to win in a congressional district that almost always voted for the Republicans. His Republican predecessor was elected to Congress six times in a row. Walz was also elected several times in a row – in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. Walz was elected Governor of Minnesota in 2018. He took the oath of office in 2019. And then came 2020, the year of Covid and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

And then there was the embezzlement of funds allocated to support families and businesses during the pandemic. Walz found himself in a difficult position. From the day he was elected as a member of the House of Representatives until 2020, Tim Walz positioned himself as a moderate Democrat, a centrist. That’s how he acted in most cases.

It is worth noting that Minnesota has not voted for a Republican president for a very long time. The last time was during Richard Nixon’s re-election for a second term. Then, only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia voted for his opponent. Nixon’s result was almost surpassed by Ronald Reagan in 1984, he took Massachusetts, but Minnesota remained with Democrat Walter Mondale – this was his home state.

In 2020, Walz begins to drift to the left and very quickly. The BLM riots were not suppressed, Walz refused to introduce the National Guard and began a controversial police reform. Minnesota has become an ultra-liberal state and a “safe haven” for the LGBT community.

The year 2023 was especially “fruitful” for liberal reforms. Several dozen laws and regulations were adopted in favor of migrants, gays, and transgender people. Some of this agenda was reasonable (such as paid sick leave and maternity leave), while others (such as the introduction of gender reassignment therapy for minors and state health insurance for illegal immigrants) caused, to put it mildly, an ambiguous reaction.

Minnesota was not considered a state for which there would be a serious fight in either 2016 or 2020, but Trump and Vance clearly intend to change this. And they will hit where it hurts – on all the mistakes that Walz made before his personal left turn, and on the measures that were taken in Minnesota after it.

Nevertheless, the choice of Harris and the bureaucracy that supports her is to some extent logical. Walz is bureaucratically sterile. He does not belong to any influential clan and will be obedient.