Tim Walz to become Vice President of the USA: Who is the man?

Until recently, Tim Walz was a nobody outside of Minnesota. But now US presidential candidate Kamala Harris has chosen the governor of the Midwestern state as her candidate for vice president. The 60-year-old former National Guardsman, teacher, football coach and congressman owes his vertical rise not least to a slogan that he has introduced into the election campaign against Donald Trump with great success in recent weeks: “weird”.

The attribute means “strange” or “odd” and is applied by Walz to Trump as well as his running mate JD Vance. It is not as denigrating as the insults constantly spread by Trump, but it does label the Republican rivals as figures with strange and unrealistic views – and thus as laughing stocks.

Tim Walz made “weird” a catchphrase for Trump

Walz showed us how to do it – and since then “weird” has become the term that Vice President Harris and other representatives of her party constantly use to describe Trump and Vance. With this catchy attribute, Walz has demonstrated his ability to formulate things simply and forcefully, which is valuable for the Harris campaign – in words that also open up access to voters without a university education.

As a white, older man, Walz is intended to be the complementary figure to Harris, who could become the first woman, black person and person of Asian descent in US history to assume the presidency. In choosing the governor of Minnesota, she has therefore made a strategic choice with which she hopes to broaden the appeal of her campaign beyond the core Democratic clientele.

Walz is expected to help the Vice President convince groups of voters who often see the Democrats as aloof and elitist. And as a representative of the Midwest, he is expected to help win over swing states in his region that could be crucial to the outcome of the election.

Although Minnesota, which traditionally favors the Democrats, is not one of the states in which they have to fear defeat in the November election, Harris is counting on Walz to appeal to many voters in other Midwestern states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, which are among the narrow circle of states in danger of losing the election.

The father of two’s eventful life shows him to be a man with a wide range of life experiences who is anything but aloof. Walz grew up in a small town in the rural state of Nebraska, which is also part of the Midwest. His father was a public school administrator and died of cancer when Walz was 19 years old.

First National Guard, later teacher, then into politics

At the age of 17, he enlisted in the National Guard, and during his 24 years of service he was deployed to a variety of locations, including the Arctic. In 1989, he graduated from a college in Nebraska with a degree in social sciences.

As a teacher, Walz worked on an indigenous reservation in the state of South Dakota and – as part of a Harvard University program – in China. He met his wife Gwen in his home state of Nebraska. They married in 1994 and later moved to Gwen’s home state of Minnesota, where they both worked as teachers at the same high school and he also worked as a football coach.

Walz only entered politics halfway through his career: in 2006 he was elected to the House of Representatives in Washington, and then in 2018 he became governor of Minnesota. His political profile combines a down-to-earth demeanor and clear language with left-wing positions.

Harris and Walz should share common values

As governor, he advocated for free school meals, protecting the right to abortion, strengthening voting rights, expanding renewable energy, cutting taxes for the middle class, and expanding paid leave for workers in Minnesota.

His attitude towards guns has changed over the years. “I am a veteran, a hunter and a gun owner. But I am also a father. And for many years I was a teacher,” he wrote on Platform X at the end of July. Gun laws are not a threat to his rights. “It’s about protecting our children.”

“We have the same values. We believe we can win the Midwest,” Walz said about Harris two weeks ago. After being recruited by her as her running mate on Tuesday, he was excited: “It reminds me a bit of the first day of school,” he admitted on the online service X – and immediately added combatively with a view to the election campaign: “Now let’s get this done, folks!”