Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz first came to national attention for dislodging a Republican congressman from a rural district. It was a gutsy career move for a high school social studies teacher, a Democrat who had never run for office.
More interesting is why he ran and what it says about us — and him.
As he told it on Twitter, Walz took two students to hear President George W. Bush speak at a 2004 re-election rally in their hometown of Mankato, Minn. They were turned away because the students had volunteered for the Democratic Party.
Walz, a National Guard master sergeant, had just returned from a deployment to Italy. He wanted to hear from the commander-in-chief who had sent him and thought it would be a learning experience for the students. But they got a taste of how deeply divided our country was becoming.
“It was at this moment that I decided to run,” he recalled.
Two years later, Walz headed to Capitol Hill. The political divisions that so offended him have deepened since then, and our country is worse for it.
In choosing Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris chose a partner with fewer political targets on his back than two others who might help nail down vital electoral votes in the swing states of Arizona and Pennsylvania. Minnesota is safe for the Democrats, and Walz may help in neighboring Wisconsin.
Of greater benefit is the message Walz’s selection sends to the nation. He has served 12 years in Congress and six as governor, building a progressive record in a heartland state. He grew up on a farm in rural Nebraska and served 24 years in the National Guard. He’s a gun owner and a hunter. He taught school and coached football. He advised his high school’s first gay-straight alliance to protect LGBTQ students.
“He doesn’t bring a state,” CNN commentator David Alexrod said, “but he brings a state of mind.”
Walz and Florida
Walz had an A-rating from the NRA. Everything changed after the mass shooting in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 14 students and three staff members died. His teenage daughter persuaded him to respond.
Running for governor that year, Walz donated NRA campaign money to charity and endorsed universal background checks and ending reciprocal-carry gun agreements among states. His NRA grade fell to an F. He won the election.
Walz and Gov. Ron DeSantis share a mutual dislike. In his 2023 State of the State address, Walz cited their vast differences, saying “I’m pretty glad we do things our way and not their way. I mean, they’re banning books from their schools. We’re banishing hunger from ours.”
Citing other differences on voting rights, abortion rights and gender-affirming health care, Walz said: “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you stop worrying about corporations going ‘woke,’ and start giving a damn about the real lives of real people.”
Walz has already managed to distill to one word the vast differences between Harris and Donald Trump.
“You know there’s something wrong with people when they talk about freedom: freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read,” he told MSNBC. “That stuff is weird.”
Walz said later he was speaking of Trump, not his running mate JD Vance. But the single word “weird” fits them both.
There’s more weird news about Vance. He wrote a gushing blurb for a book titled “Unhumans,” meaning anyone to his left. The book’s co-author is a notorious extremist, Jack Posobiec, who left the right-wing outlet Rebel News after plagiarizing a white supremacist and who collaborated with neo-Nazis on a conspiracy-laden documentary.
Progressives are ‘unhuman’
The book says of progressives: “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman.”
Others in Trump’s orbit who added book blurbs included Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. The foreword is by Steve Bannon.
Such is the company Vance keeps.
This is Vance’s praise for “Unhumans”: “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people.”
Weird. It’s a fine descriptor for one who takes up Joe McCarthy’s torch and finds Commies everywhere, and who praises a book that paints fellow Americans in tones that recall the genocides of the 20th Century.
Who better represents the America we hope to be — Vance or Walz? The contrast couldn’t be sharper. Harris chose wisely.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
