Tim Walz: The man tasked with securing the Midwest for Harris

It’s already evening, the students have long since returned home, but at Bethlehem’s Freedom High School, Tim Walz takes on the role that suits the place – and is very familiar to him: that of the teacher. In order to win over the approximately 2,000 listeners in the sports hall, the former geography teacher tries a history lesson: It’s about steel, tanks – and Nazis.

During World War II, steel was brought from Minnesota, where Walz has been governor since 2019, to production plants in Pennsylvania. “It was our people who built the tanks that won World War II and freed the world from Nazi oppression,” Walz says. Applause.

But today there are Republican candidates who are “proud to call themselves Nazis.” He means Mark Robinson, who is running for governor in North Carolina and is supported by Donald Trump. Several media outlets recently reported that the African-American man had called himself a “black Nazi” in the past. Boos in the hall.

Walz lets this sink in, then calls out to the crowd: Without the people in such industrial regions, there would be no bridges, highways and skyscrapers in America. The audience thanks him and chants: “USA, USA, USA” – again and again.

Kamala Harris’ vice presidential candidate is visiting Bethlehem, a city of about 80,000 residents in the key state of Pennsylvania. Four years ago, Joe Biden won the district by less than one percent. Many workers in the region sympathize with Trump. Every vote counts here in the truest sense. And whoever loses Pennsylvania will most likely lose the presidential election.

Walz awakens patriotic feelings among Democrats

Tim Walz achieves something at his rallies that is not a given for Democrats. He awakens patriotic feelings in his viewers. When Biden took office four years ago, there were no chants of “USA.” Patriotism can also be a left-wing project, says Walz, who grew up in deep-red Nebraska and likes to portray himself as a hunting gun owner. A camouflage-look hat with the names Harris and Walz on it is selling brilliantly these days.

On Tuesday evening, Walz will face Senator JD Vance for a televised debate. In the shadow of Harris and Trump, this year is probably one of the most spectacular running mate duels in the recent history of the United States. JD Vance, 40 years old, from Ohio, against Tim Walz, twenty years older, from Nebraska. They are two men from different generations, but both grew up in difficult circumstances in the Midwest.

Usually, running mate candidates have one main task: not to cause any damage in the election campaign. It’s not that easy for Vance, as he was once a Trump hater who called the former president an “idiot” and “America’s Hitler.” Now the turncoat Vance is acting as a kind of amplifier for Trump, at least as extreme as the original.

Walz is completely different: The governor of Minnesota has made a name for himself as a social politician. It is intended to help dispel prejudices against the first black female presidential candidate in the country’s history. Walz and Vance are completely different characters, but they have the same job profile: winning the Midwest for and with their bosses. Walz exudes “dad vibes” during his performances, as his fans lovingly put it. He is just a normal guy next door who speaks in simple sentences, completely different from the best-selling author Vance, who studied at an elite university and worked in Silicon Valley.

“I was proud to wear the uniform of this country for the next 24 years”

In the 1960s and 1970s, Timothy James Walz grew up in Valentine, Nebraska. 5,500 people and 184,000 cattle live in the area. Father James Walz is the superintendent of the local schools, mother is a housewife. Tim Walz is a sports enthusiast and plays football, basketball and golf.

But after the first year of high school, his previously inexperienced life changes dramatically. Her father, a chain smoker, is diagnosed with lung cancer. The family moves to the even more rural Butte, also in Nebraska, where his mother grew up and receives support from her family. The treatment costs become an immense financial burden.

“Two days after my 17th birthday, my father took me with him to the National Guard,” Walz likes to say during the election campaign. “I was proud to wear this country’s uniform for the next 24 years.” In 1984, the year JD Vance was born, Tim Walz’s father died. From then on, the family is dependent on a survivor’s pension, which is barely enough. Decades later, as Minnesota governor, Tim Walz will sign a law that will help families struggling because of high medical and hospital costs.

Before entering politics, Walz worked as a teacher for more than a decade and a half, first in Nebraska, then for a year in China, and later in Mankato, Minnesota.

He is still remembered well there. If you talk to Sherri Blasing, the current principal of Mankato West High School, about Walz, she will first go to the display case with the trophies in the entrance area of ​​the school. She points to the award from 1999, when the school’s football team, the Scarlets, won the Minnesota championship. “Tim was our defensive coach,” says Blasing. A quarter of a century later, that’s his job again. He organizes the defense for Kamala Harris so that her attacks against Trump are successful.

Blasing probably knows Tim Walz better than anyone else in Mankato. For 22 years they were not only colleagues, but also neighbors. “He didn’t tell his students what to think. He taught them critical thinking,” she says. You should be able to form your own opinion. Walz teaches geography at the school, which also includes politics and history. Nicole Griensewic was one of his students at the time: “Tim Walz was the teacher with whom everyone enjoyed taking part in class,” remembers the 40-year-old.

The fact that Walz went into politics at all has a lot to do with former President George W. Bush. In 2004, Bush came to Mankato, he was in the middle of the campaign for his re-election. Some students want to listen to his speech, but are not allowed in because they are wearing a John Kerry button, the then Democratic candidate. Walz accompanies his students – when they are rejected, he is outraged. He later says that this moment politicized him. There is also a photo surrounding the Bush visit in which Walz holds up an anti-Bush and pro-Kerry poster.

Bob Ihrig observed the transformation of teacher Tim Walz into a politician up close. In 1996, he interviewed Walz at Mankato West High School; they first became colleagues and then friends. The year after the Bush rally, Walz decided to run for Congress. “He was running against an incumbent Republican who had already held the office for several terms,” Ihrig said in a coffee shop in downtown Mankato. Southern Minnesota, where Walz is running, is Republican homeland.

At that time, a logistics project was being worked on to transport coal from Wyoming by rail through southern Minnesota. “We’re talking about several trains a day that should run through here,” Ihrig remembers. In Rochester, about an hour and a half from Mankato, the local hospital is worried that coal shipments could affect the health of their patients. Walz took up the concerns, opposed the project and won the election against the Republican incumbent, who brushed aside the concerns. “He surprised and shocked everyone with his victory,” says Ihrig. It still fills him with pride today when he tells the story.

From 2007 to 2019, Walz represented Minnesota’s first electoral district in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. He then became governor of the state, secured the right to abortion and organized free school meals for all students in Minnesota.

“Tim Walz is a man of the middle, a moderator”

The Republican Michael Brodkorb is one of Tim Walz’s opponents at this time. “I tried to throw Walz out of Congress again,” he says today with a smile. At the time, Brodkorb worked as a strategist for the Republican Party. It’s his job to make Walz’s life as difficult as possible.

But as the years go by, his political beliefs and those of the Republicans continue to diverge. Brodkorb does not believe that politics should have an influence on the decisions women make in consultation with their doctors. Brodkorb believes Walz’s stance on abortion is correct. “Tim Walz is a man of the middle, a moderator,” he says. “His way of doing politics resonates with many people who live in suburbs and rural areas.”

Brodkorb has been at odds with the Republican Party since Trump first became the nominee in 2016. He never voted for Trump once. This time he wants to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Brodkorb says, “I think Walz will be a good vice president.”

Hardly anyone had Tim Walz on their list before Harris made him her running mate. While the incumbent Vice President wants to distinguish herself clearly in the middle and, as elected president, wants to push a strict law to protect the American southern border through Congress, for example, Walz has a different task. On the one hand, it should serve the left wing of the Democrats and, on the other hand, address social problems in the country in Washington.

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Walz hasn’t made any big mistakes in the election campaign so far. At the Democratic convention, he moved many to tears when he said that he and his wife, Gwen, once underwent fertility treatments.

Tim Walz always manages to irritate his competitors. A few weeks ago he simply described Trump and Vance as “weird” and “strange.” It’s unclear whether this was spontaneous or calculated, but it caught on: the term is now used almost every time the Democrats appear. It became a Walz brand – just as Walz himself has since become one.