Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) as her vice presidential running mate on Tuesday. The obscure governor and former congressman has signed bills that would remove children from their parents’ custody if the parents refused to carry out transgender procedures, allowed abortion until birth, and left churches meeting online while so-called “essential businesses” were permitted to open their doors more fully during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The vice presidential nod had narrowed to Walz and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D), whose ardent support of Israel would have complicated Harris’s ability to win Michigan. The 60-year-old Walz — who is in his fifth year as governor of Minnesota and served 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives — has sometimes drawn comparisons with Bernie Sanders by comparing socialism to “neighborliness.”
“It just highlights how radical Kamala Harris is,” because she “listened to the Hamas wing of her own party in selecting a nominee,” Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance told a press gaggle late Tuesday morning. Tim Walz “has proposed defunding the police just as Kamala Harris has,” said Vance. “Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and then the few who got caught, Kamala Harris helped bail them out of jail. So, it is more instructive about what it says about Kamala Harris. She doesn’t care about the border. She doesn’t care about crime. She doesn’t care about energy. And most of all, she doesn’t care about Americans who have been made to suffer under those policies.”
Walz’s career could be split into two halves, said those who have clashed with him over the years: his time as a congressman in a swing district, where he had to modulate his own liberal views, and his tack to the left once he became governor. In Congress, “he focused on veterans issues, and kept his head down to some extent,” explained Moses Bratrud, director of strategy at the Minnesota Family Council, on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” But as governor, he has appealed more to the Ilhan Omar wing of the Democratic Party, said Bratrud. “It’s almost like there are two Tim Walzes.”
Walz served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (2007 to 2019) after defeating a Republican congressman in a rural district. His record sometimes tracked with his constituents’ more centrist views — for instance, his work on veterans affairs — although Walz’s social liberalism earned him a 0% rating from FRC Action in his next-to-last year in Congress.
As governor, he has signed abortion-expanding legislation, placed transgender ideology over parents’ rights, and limited religious liberty.
Abortion
In January 2023, Walz signed the Protection of Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, which allows unlimited abortion-on-demand until birth. He also increased the payments abortionists receive from the government when they carry out taxpayer-funded abortions, removed informed consent laws, curtailed funding for pro-life pregnancy resource centers, and removed a requirement that babies born alive during botched abortions receive life-saving emergency care.
“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz make up the most pro-abortion presidential ticket America has ever seen. There is no daylight between them on this issue,” said SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand.
Walz called his state an “island of decency” for allowing abortion in an area allegedly dominated by pro-life policies. Walz said among “the things we value most around freedom” include “reproductive freedom,” a euphemism for abortion. At times he has said the “golden rule” is: “Mind your own d--n business!” about who people “marry, their own health care decisions, what books they read.”
“Sadly, these aggressive attacks against vulnerable women and children have earned Walz a place as Harris’s running mate on the Democratic ticket,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life Action, in an email to TWS.
Transgender Policy
Walz has aggressively sided with the transgender industry and promoted extreme gender ideology in the state, including for minors against their parents’ will. Among his most controversial actions, Walz declared Minnesota a so-called sanctuary state for transgenderism. In April 2023, Walz signed a bill (House File 146) that would take minors into state emergency custody if the child has been “unable to obtain gender-affirming health care” — that is, if parents objected to transitioning their minor child. Critics like Bratrud call it “the kidnapping bill,” because it will remove children from any state in the union from their parents’ care if those parents do not enact Walz’s view of transgender ideology.
Instead, Walz has barred parents from getting any alternative, banning so-called “conversion therapy.” He signed a bill that “threatens mental health practitioners who offer voluntary, compassionate care to young people who just want to live according to their faith in the area of gender and sexuality,” explained Bratrud.
Walz’s guidelines have seen schools put feminine hygiene products in boys’ restrooms. “That’s just crazy. That makes no sense whatsoever,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) told Newsmax on Tuesday morning.
“When it comes to transgenderism — the anti-science movement that promotes the right of males and females (including minors) to switch their sex — the Biden-Harris team is the most radical administration in American history,” said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, in an email sent to TWS.
“Freedom is on the march in Minnesota. Decency is on the march in Minnesota. Compassion is on the march in Minnesota,” said Walz after signing the “kidnapping bill,” compassionate therapy ban, and abortion expansion bills on the same day.
Walz has portrayed his socially liberal policies as a matter of personal “freedom,” the key word Kamala Harris has used to brand her presidential campaign. “Here in Minnesota, we believe in protecting personal freedoms. It’s why we established reproductive freedom and gender-affirming care as fundamental rights in Minnesota. And it’s why we banned the practice of ‘conversion therapy’ and ended book bans based on ideology,” Walz posted on X on July 26.
Yet religious denominations say they experienced little freedom during the 2020 COVID lockdowns, when Walz’s policies kept houses of worship closed while bars and casinos opened more fully. Walz issued an executive order that allowed so-called essential businesses to expand their capacity — but in-person church services remained limited to 10 people. The Becket Fund sued, and Roman Catholic and conservative Lutheran church leaders announced they would ignore his executive order and reopen on Pentecost Sunday. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), a Muslim, tenaciously defended Walz’s lockdown policies, contending that since houses of worship “are not buildings,” then “churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples have never been closed because Minnesotans have been doing the work of worship outside the buildings: serving the poor, sick, and needy, delivering meals, ministering online to the spiritual needs of their people.”
“[I]t is so disheartening that the Governor has subordinated our spiritual well-being to the economic well-being of the State,” said Rev. Dr. Lucas Woodford, president of the Minnesota South District of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Socialism, Lawlessness, Immigration, and China
Walz has earned comparisons with Bernie Sanders for his embrace of the term socialism. “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness. Just do the d--n work!” said Walz.
Walz was governor in May 2020, when George Floyd’s death in police custody touched off the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots. Rioters burned down the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd precinct en route to inflicting an estimated half-a-billion dollars of damage statewide. Walz faced steep criticism for waiting three days to call in the National Guard, due to strained relations with then-President Donald Trump.
Walz has favored amnesty for illegal immigration, as well as legal immigration expansion, earning an F- from NumbersUSA. Walz once vowed that, if the U.S. built a wall to stop the flow of illegal immigrants over the southern border, he would “invest in a … ladder factory” to help illegals climb the wall. Walz has also voiced his support for so-called “sanctuary cities,” which do not comply with federal law enforcement’s efforts to deport criminal aliens and others who entered the country unlawfully.
Walz summed up his views of the last four years in a social media post, stating, “Joe Biden is and has always been an American hero. History will look fondly on his legacy.”
Walz was born on April 6, 1964, in West Point, Nebraska, to James F. Walz and Darlene Rose Reiman Walz. He served 24 years in the Army National Guard and worked as a teacher, including a year on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate has longstanding ties to America’s most potent foreign adversary, China. Walz spent a year teaching in the People’s Republic of China, instructing students at Guangdong province’s Foshan No. 1 High School in English and American history in 1989 — the year of the Tienanmen Square massacre. If it left unpleasant memories, they were soon forgotten, as Walz and his wife, Gwen (nee Whipple), took their honeymoon in China in 1994. They set up a company that carried out exchange visits to China, Educational Travel Adventures. Walz said he had visited China 30 times by 2016.
Walz belongs to the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which has paid for its employees’ abortions through its health care plan, ordained non-celibate homosexual clergy, and promoted transgenderism and “queerness” as “beauty.” He and his wife, Gwen, have two children, Hope and Gus, both conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF), a fact Walz has used as a political weapon in his campaign speeches. Walz got his first political job in 2004 as a organizer for the John Kerry presidential campaign.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
