Kamala Harris’ freshly minted veep pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was once arrested for drunk driving after he was pulled over for driving more than 40 mph above the speed limit.
Walz, 60, who was 31 at the time and working as a teacher in Alliance, Neb., was caught on police radar driving his silver Mazda 96 mph in a 55 zone just before midnight Sept. 23, 1995.
When the trooper approached his window, he detected “a strong odor of alcoholic beverage” emanating from the vehicle, court documents show.
After flunking a field sobriety test, he submitted to a breath test, which pegged his blood-alcohol level at 0.128%, well above the state’s legal limit of 0.08%.
Walz was arrested and taken to Dawes County Jail. He was given a blood test, but those results could not be immediately confirmed.
The following March, Walz pleaded the charges down to reckless driving, which required him to admit that he “drove a vehicle in a manner as to indicate an indifference or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property,” according to a court transcript.
After accepting the plea agreement, Walz’s lawyer Russell Harford attempted to explain that his client was speeding because he thought the trooper was “somebody chasing him,” alleging he didn’t fire up the lightbar in a timely fashion.
“This is a little bit bizarre, but Mr. Walz thought somebody was chasing him. The officer didn’t turn on his red lights and he — somebody came up real fast behind him and he didn’t know what they were doing,” Harford told Judge James Hansen.
“So he sped up to try to get away, fearing that somebody was after him. Lo and behold, it was a state patrolman that was behind him, so the faster he went, the faster the state patrol officer went,” he admitted.
Walz wound up paying a $200 fine plus court costs. He offered to resign his position as a teacher at Alliance High School, but the principal “talked him out of resigning,” the court transcript shows.
The judge scolded Walz for driving under the influence, which particularly concerned him given his position as a teacher.
“This is a real problem for me to see a teacher get picked up for this kind of offense because you do have [to be] a role model,” he said.
When the issue of his DUI arrest was raised during Walz’s successful 2006 campaign for Congress in Minnesota, his campaign manager Kerry Greeley told Rochester, Minnesota, newspaper the Post Bulletin that he wasn’t drunk and that he was unable to understand the officer’s commands due to hearing loss he incurred from his 21 years as an artilleryman in the Army National Guard.
“He couldn’t understand what the officer was saying to him,” Greeley alleged.
She also claimed the judge “threw out the DUI charges” against Walz and “chastised the officer” for not realizing he was deaf, the outlet writes.
However, there’s nothing in the court records or transcript obtained by Alpha News to back up her assertion.
According to MPR News, Walz had a surgical procedure called a strapedectomy to repair his hearing, which fixed damaged bones inside his ear.
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