A Nebraska native with a gun license and workwear in his closet, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota is, of course, now also the Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States. Whether in a blocky sports jacket and tie or a T-shirt and Red Wing boots, Mr. Walz brings to the Democratic ticket a kind of down-home lack of fuss that is seldom seen anymore in politics.
Though Mr. Walz outpaced tough competition to become Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, he still has managed to seem as unassuming as the barn jackets, workboots and sometimes rumpled khakis that are his wardrobe staples. He looks to be dressed for the job at hand, often as though that job involves standing on the sidelines of a football game.
Mr. Walz, with many of his clothing choices, seems to want to fit in rather than stand out. He regularly wears zip-up fleeces, chore coats, sweatshirts, creased jeans and heritage staples like a black-and-red-plaid Filson Mackinaw Cruiser jacket he donned in a campaign ad when running for re-election as governor in 2022.
To a large extent, his look distinguishes him from the triple-pleat trousers favored by Beltway dinosaurs or the stretchy Suitsupply uniforms preferred by many male young guns in the nation’s capital. Even among his competitors in the race for the vice-presidential nomination — Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona and a former astronaut — there were more regulation navy suits to be seen than chore coats. And that may be no coincidence.
Mr. Walz was a high school teacher and he served in the Army National Guard for decades. As an educator, he was “the picture of humble, masculine service energy,” a former student of his at Mankato West High School told Politico this week. He was a “passionate teacher,” the student said, one who paced between desks, seldom sitting at his own, wore a shirt and tie and sweated profusely. That was in the mid-2000s, right before Mr. Walz made his defining leap from the classroom.
Already a father of two when he entered politics, Mr. Walz served as a congressman from Minnesota before going on to win two races for governor in the state by impressive margins. Relatable in appearance, the 60-year-old candidate has often dressed for news conferences in T-shirts or ball caps that would not be out of place on the checkout line at Hy-Vee.
Like Senator Bernie Sanders, Democrat of Vermont — another politician whose wardrobe priorities seem to favor comfort over styling — Mr. Walz has cultivated an approachable image his backers are relying on to convince voters that he’s the real deal. (Some of his garments, for all their workwear associations, are by no means a bargain: The plaid Filson jacket he has worn has a retail price of $550.) Mr. Walz’s look is one with its own distinct tradition — politicians as disparate as John F. Kerry and Lamar Alexander reached for barn jackets and flannel shirts when venturing into rural America.
“There’s this funny thing in American politics that you do have to evince an Everyman or Everywoman persona to some extent,” said Pat Egan, a professor of politics at N.Y.U. “It’s always calculated to some extent, as with Fetterman,” Mr. Egan added, referring to Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, whose shorts and Carhartt garb worn on Capitol Hill have been pointed to by some as inconsistent with his Ivy League background.
“You almost have to go back to Michael Dukakis to find someone like Walz,” Mr. Egan said. “He doesn’t own a house. He has no stocks. He gets a teacher’s pension. Compared to a lot of folks on the political scene, that’s pretty basic, if that’s what we mean by authentic.”
Authenticity, said Valerie Steele, the director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, is something many people are chasing. “It doesn’t exist,” she said.
“What we can do is spot is flagrant inauthenticity,” she added, as well as a sense that some politicians, if not “more fake than others,” substantially change their wardrobe to suit their ambitions.
Before accepting the nomination to become Donald J. Trump’s running mate on the Republican ticket, Senator JD Vance of Ohio was most often seen in blazers and jeans in dark hipster washes. Now he dresses in the slick tailored suits and red ties that are a trademark of those in Mr. Trump’s inner circle.
Mr. Walz also switched things up when it came time for his debut as Ms. Harris’s running mate on the Democratic ticket at a rally on Tuesday evening in Philadelphia. For the big reveal, he chose a conventional dark suit, coordinating tie and a white spread collar shirt that would not be out of place in a boardroom.
The shift away from his customary football coach attire may have signaled his new elevated status, yet in some sense the changes were already in the offing.
Even before Ms. Harris vaulted Mr. Walz onto the national political stage, he had already shown signs that he had begun to give greater thought to the optics of his sartorial choices: stylishly squared-off glasses, for instance, along with natty blue blazers, snug trousers and the type of white-soled sneaker shoes that are all but standard issue footwear among fashion-conscious politicians these days.
And there was the hat. When taking Ms. Harris’s call inviting him to join the Democratic ticket, Mr. Walz wore a camouflage baseball cap, a style that the Harris-Walz campaign has adopted as merchandise. The campaign’s hat, with Harris-Walz written in orange on the front, was close in resemblance to a cap sold as merchandise on Chappell Roan’s recent Midwest Princess concert tour. The likeness was similar enough for the Missouri-born performer to share a composite image of both hats on X with the caption “is this real.”
It was real and, intentionally or otherwise, hip enough that an early production run of Harris-Walz campaign hats sold out 30 minutes after their release on Tuesday, according to Seth Schuster, a campaign spokesman, with an additional $1 million in orders received for the $40 cap by the end of day. (Delivery is slated for October.)
Not only was the merchandise savvy both in terms of “politics and fashion,” said Todd Snyder, a men’s wear designer, but “it kind of shows you the error of underestimating Minnesota Nice.”
“People see the barn jackets, the Carhartt, the Red Wings, and they come away with this ‘Aw, shucks!’ image,” added Mr. Snyder, who was born in Iowa. “Midwesterners are nice, but if you’re not watching, we can sneak up and catch you on your back foot.”
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