ANALYSIS — I don’t remember much from our candidate interview with Tim Walz, but I’m going to guess I wasn’t impressed. In my defense, it was nearly 19 years ago, when Walz ran in southern Minnesota’s 1st District.
Even though I’d look much smarter now if I said back then that he was a rising star and future vice presidential material, something closer to the opposite is probably true. When we met with Walz on Nov. 10, 2005, he was a global geology teacher at Mankato West High School and a first-time candidate who had served in the Army National Guard. He was running with no money and no consultants. When we asked about potential personal money, he talked about some in-kind contributions for gas. That usually isn’t the recipe for success.
A couple weeks before our interview, my colleague Stuart Rothenberg listed Walz and others in a group of “mediocre fundraisers with plenty to prove” inhis Roll Call column. At the time, there wasn’t any evidence that the Walz campaign was going anywhere fast except for a nascent positive national political environment for Democrats.
[‘Mind your own damn business’: Harris, Walz make debut at rowdy rally]
Looking back at my interview notes, it’s striking how difficult it is for normal people to run for office and how unlikely his election was. Walz talked about taking a leave from his job in January, earning some money teaching ACT prep courses but effectively living off of his wife’s salary as an No Child Left Behind assessment coordinator for the school district.
The beginning of Walz’s political journey is also a reminder of the importance of timing. In the Aug. 25, 2006, issue of The Rothenberg Political Report, we wrote that his challenge to GOP Rep. Gil Gutknecht still didn’t “look particularly competitive at the moment.” But the race quickly ascended up the list of competitive races as the cycle spiraled downward for Republicans in backlash against unpopular President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.
We added Minnesota’s 1st District to our list of competitive races as Likely Republican on Oct. 13 and moved it to Lean Republican in the Oct. 20 issue of the Rothenberg Report. By Oct. 27, “GOP insiders” saw Minnesota as “volatile” and were concerned about the incumbent. In the final pre-election issue, Minnesota’s 1st was rated as a Toss-up. Walz won by nearly 6 points, 53-47 percent, in the Democratic wave that swept his party into the majority by gaining 31 seats nationwide.
[Democratic Class of ’06 cheers one of their own on national ticket]
If Walz hadn’t run in 2006, he may not be where he is today. Yes, he won reelection easily in 2008, but Walz won with less than 50 percent in the 2010 Republican wave and less than 1 point in 2016, both with the advantages of an incumbent. He was elected governor in 2018, in another good year for Democrats in the midterm of President Donald Trump. Walz won with nearly 54 percent, but performed just 1.6 points better than the average Democratic-Farmer-Labor statewide candidate, according to Inside Elections’ Vote Above Replacement metric. And when Walz won reelection four years later with 52 percent, his VAR was a modest 1.1 because Minnesota is a Democratic-leaning state.
Even though Walz’s addition to the ticket doesn’t dramatically alter the list of presidential battleground states at the outset, there were morsels of his most attractive features in our interview nearly two decades ago.
‘The right moderate candidate to win’
Walz talked about the need for authentic leadership and authentic experience, which looks like a big reason why Vice President Kamala Harris invited him to be her running mate. She didn’t need him to win Minnesota, and there’s no guarantee he will boost her chances of winning in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but his resume, record and style help balance the ticket topped by a “California liberal” in the words of Republicans and potentially in the minds of some independent voters.
It’s interesting that the Walz choice is being hailed by progressives when one of the main sections of his campaign literature from 2006 was “Winnable Swing District — Walz is the right moderate candidate to win.” In this race, Democrats must hope that Walz can appeal to voters on different points of the political spectrum with different pieces of his profile.
While Walz performed well in media interviews, and became popular with Democrats outside of Minnesota for tagging the “weird” label to Republicans, we’ll see how the governor performs under even more scrutiny. A couple competitive House races and even two statewide runs are nothing compared to a presidential race.
[How selection of Gov. Tim Walz as Harris’ running mate is playing]
Republicans will certainly highlight the state of the Twin Cities in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and potentially some of his progressive policies. But if Walz can handle those attacks and deliver some of his own in his affable way, the governor could be an asset to the ticket.
In the end, Walz feels like a relatively safe choice for Harris. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s biography as a Navy captain, former astronaut and husband to former Rep. Gabby Giffords had the potential for broader national appeal. But the vice president’s comfortability with Walz as a running mate and potential governing partner are hard to quantify from the outside.
For Walz, timing continues to be a key ingredient to his political success. From high school teacher to Congress in a dozen years and now from a relatively obscure governor to a national figure in just a couple of weeks, it’s been quite a ride. And while he may have had difficulty getting elected on a presidential ticket under normal circ*mstances, he gets to run with Harris against an aging and unpopular former president who has been convicted on 34 felony counts.
In politics, timing is almost everything.
Nathan L. Gonzales is an elections analyst with CQ Roll Call.
