MINNEAPOLIS—Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has picked Gov. Tim Walz, DFL-Minn., a union member, as her vice-presidential running mate for this fall’s election. The DFL stands for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the official name for Democrats in Minnesota.
Unionists, particularly from his home state, but also including United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, strongly advocated for Walz, a member of Education Minnesota, the state’s joint AFT-National Education Association affiliate. Education Minnesota President Denise Specht originated the endorsement letter.
They also made the point that Walz’s Midwestern roots and ability to connect with rural, suburban, and urban residents will help Harris win the swing states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, all vital to her bid for the White House.
“There is no path to 270” electoral votes needed to win the presidency this fall “without those states,” the Minnesotan leaders noted. The three states have 36 electoral votes, combined.
Walz was born in Nebraska but moved to Minnesota, where he served for more than two decades in the Army National Guard, rising to the top enlisted rank of sergeant major, before teaching high school social studies and history, and eventually entering politics.
He represented a mostly rural Southern Minnesota congressional district for more than a dozen years before winning the governorship six years ago. In his U.S. House service, Walz concentrated on rural and veterans’ affairs issues.
Fain told Face The Nation two days before Walz’s selection that Harris “would pick someone she’s most comfortable with, you know, because it’s her running mate, and it’s who she’s going to be serving with. So that’s who we believe would be best for labor and working-class people.”
That running mate, he said, would be either Walz or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Led by Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham, two dozen Minnesota union leaders touted Walz’s achievements for workers while in office. They pointed out his union chops, including that Walz—like Democratic President Joe Biden—walked a picket line with UAW members last year during the union’s Stand Up strike against the Detroit automakers.
Backed the UAW strike
Biden went to Michigan for his picketing, outside a Ford plant. Walz headed to a Stellantis/FiatChrysler plant in Plymouth, Minn.
Fain told MSNBC “You have one candidate in” Republican nominee Donald “Trump who represents the billionaire class. I call him the lap dog for the billionaires. And you have a candidate in Kamala Harris, who stands for working-class people.”
Walz “can cross the lines of race and place,” the Minnesotan labor and allied leaders wrote Harris. Unlike other VP hopefuls, Walz hails from Mankato, a smaller city in a mostly rural area southwest of the Twin Cities. He taught history and social science at Mankato West High School before entering politics. But he kept his union membership even after being elected to Congress.
The state’s union leaders, who included presidents of regional labor federations in the Twin Cities, Western Minnesota, and Southeastern Minnesota, also said Walz gives Minnesota, which is bluish, but not deep-blue, to Harris.
Other signers of the pro-Walz letter included leaders of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, the regional councils of the Laborers and the Carpenters, a Teamsters official, and the state president of the Building Trades.
Walz was a strong advocate for public health, combatting the coronavirus pandemic by ordering temporary closing of schools and businesses. State Republicans, following their national party line, screamed.
They also screamed Walz should have sent in the National Guard rapidly after protests broke out against Minneapolis police’s murder of unarmed and unresisting African-American man, George Floyd. The murder set off a national protest campaign around police murders and discrimination against Blacks.
After winning re-election by eight percentage points against a Trumpite two years ago, and sweeping Democratic-Farmer-Labor majorities into the state House and Senate with him, Walz and the lawmakers enacted a comprehensive and progressive pro-worker program.
“As governor, he has been the ally of working families,” the joint letter said. Walz produced pay hikes for educators “by increasing education spending by billions of dollars.”
Walz also “enacted paid family and medical leave for all workers, provided unemployment insurance to hourly school workers, expanded collective bargaining rights to Minnesotans, provided free school meals to every Minnesota student and…signed a tough law against wage theft by corporations and developers and made it illegal for employers to force working people to attend anti-union meetings.”
Walz and the DFL also ensured Minnesota was a haven for persecuted people from surrounding deep-red Republican states. That included women seeking abortions and LGBT people and transgender people fleeing legal restrictions and Republican-produced hate.
The Minnesota leaders also noted former history and social studies teacher Walz is “able to efficiently expose the dog whistles and hypocrisy of the opposition, an ability especially necessary in an abbreviated campaign.”
It was Walz who coined the term “just weird” for the Republican ticket of Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. It went viral on social media.
He elaborated on that description at a fundraiser for Harris in the Twin Cities on August 5. “It wasn’t a slur to call these guys weird. It was an observation.”
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