Pacing in front of a crowd in a hotel ballroom in 2018, a bespectacled Tim Walz was clutching a wireless microphone and speed talking his way through his evolution on an issue that had taken on a new urgency among Democrats.
The rural, southern Minnesota congressman was a former National Guard member, gun owner, hunter and recipient of an A rating from the National Rifle Association. The NRA had also given him thousands of dollars in campaign donations. Now, he was giving it all back.
“Today I have a more important job; my job is to be dad to a 17-year-old daughter named Hope,” he told the crowd, not long after a shooter opened fire on students and staff at a high school in Parkland, Fla. “Hope woke up five weeks ago … and said, ‘Dad, you’re the only person I know who’s in elected office, you need to stop what’s happening.’”
Walz, who was courting Democratic activists in his first run for governor, would go on to win the office — twice — and sign bills into law that expanded background checks, created red flag protection orders and increased penalties on illegal gun purchases. The day he was announced as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential nominee, his change on the issue of guns invited immediate pushback from the NRA, which described Walz as a “political chameleon.”
“In Congress, Walz purported to be a friend of gun owners to receive their support in his rural Minnesota district,” said Randy Kozuch, chair of the NRA Political Victory Fund. “Once he had his eyes set on other offices, he sold out law-abiding Minnesotans and promoted a radical gun control agenda.”
Walz’s evolution on guns and other issues as governor has become a familiar frame of attack as he campaigns for the nation’s second-in-command. Opponents see an opportunist who licks his finger to see which way the political winds are blowing. Political allies and friends say he’s always been progressive on certain issues. On others, including guns, he’s evolved as the world and his constituency changed.
“To not evolve says something about you,” said Meredith Vadis, who worked on Walz’s first congressional campaign and spent more than four years in his office in Congress.
“He has always been a pragmatist. I think he comes with a very clear set of values, and those are the road map.”