“A UNICORN”
Walz gave the nascent Harris campaign the new attack line in a late July interview: “These are weird people on the other side: They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room,” referring to book bans and women’s reproductive consultations with doctors.
Walz has also attacked the claims by Trump and Vance of having middle class credentials. “They keep talking about the middle class. A robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are? They don’t know who we are,” Walz said in an MSNBC interview.
That approach has struck a chord with the young voters Harris needs to reengage. David Hogg, the co-founder of the gun safety group March for Our Lives, described him as a “great communicator”.
Walz is “somewhat of a unicorn”, said Ryan Dawkins, a political science professor at Minnesota’s Carleton College – a man born in a small town in rural Nebraska capable of conveying Harris’ message to core Democratic voters, and those that the party has failed to reach in recent years.
Dawkins praised his ability to connect with rural voters. It is a group the Biden administration has tried to reach with infrastructure spending and other pragmatic policies, but with little show of messaging success so far.
In the 2016 election, Trump won 59 per cent of rural voters; in 2020 that number rose to 65 per cent even though Trump lost the election, according to Pew Research.
In the 2022 governor’s race, Walz won with 52.27 per cent to his Republican opponent’s 44.61 per cent, although swaths of rural Minnesota voted for the opponent.
While Walz has supported Democratic Party orthodoxy on issues ranging from legalised abortion and same-sex marriage to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, he also racked up a centrist voting record during his congressional career.
He was a staunch defender of government support for farmers and military veterans, as well as gun-owner rights that won praise from the National Rifle Association, according to The Almanac of American Politics.
He subsequently registered a failing grade with the NRA after supporting gun-control measures during his first campaign for governor.
Walz’s shift from a centrist representing a single rural district in Congress to a more progressive politician as governor may have been in response to the demands of voters in major cities like Minneapolis-St Paul. But it leaves him open to Republican attacks, Dawkins said in a telephone interview.
“He runs the risk of reinforcing some of the worst fears people have of Kamala Harris being a San Francisco liberal,” Dawkins said.
Walz has a ready counter-attack.
“What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn and women are making their own healthcare decisions,” Walz said in a July CNN interview. “So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.”
As the state’s top executive, Walz mandated the use of face coverings during the COVID-19 pandemic and signed a law making marital rape illegal. He presided over several years of budget surpluses in Minnesota on the road to his 2022 reelection.
During that campaign, Walz touted the backing of several influential labor unions, including the state AFL-CIO, firefighters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), teachers and others.
His tenure was marked by the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murder. Walz assigned the state’s attorney general to lead the prosecution in the case, saying people “don’t believe justice can be served”.