Before he was known to the nation as an affable Midwestern dad and a vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz was a fast-talking political long shot in an ill-fitting suit, spoiling, in his Minnesotan way, for a debate-stage fight.
As he stood next to his opponent — a crisply dressed six-term Republican congressman — Mr. Walz, a teacher by training, offered viewers a stark contrast at that 2006 debate, hosted by KSMQ-TV. Mr. Walz cast their choice as one between a political insider focused on “moving up in elected office” and the alternative he said he represented: “I live in the world that most of you live in.”
Nearly two decades later, Mr. Walz is the one who has moved up in elected office, rising from congressman to governor and now, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. He is set to face Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, in a high-profile debate on Tuesday.
Mr. Walz and his allies have tried to set expectations high for Mr. Vance, emphasizing his Yale Law School credentials. And Mr. Vance is a practiced verbal pugilist who seems to delight in combative exchanges on cable news and Sunday morning shows.
But a review of a half-dozen recorded debates over Mr. Walz’s career makes clear that while the camo-wearing, car-tinkering man from Mankato may not be his party’s most stirring speaker, he is in fact a seasoned debater himself.
He is capable of both delivering punchy criticisms and exuding the Everyman appeal that helped propel him to the Democratic ticket — it was Mr. Walz, after all, who memorably branded the Trump-Vance ticket as “weird.” At times, though, Mr. Walz has been knocked off-kilter, too.
“He can get a bit wordy,” said former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a Republican. “But he’s an energetic and assertive speaker.”
Here’s what we’ve learned about Mr. Walz’s debating style, and what it may tell us about Tuesday’s matchup against Mr. Vance.
He’s no lofty orator, but he can be nimble onstage.
Two summers ago, as Mr. Walz ran for his second term as governor, he trekked to tiny Morgan, Minn., for an agriculture-focused forum called Farmfest.
The crowd seemed to lean conservative, and Mr. Walz’s Republican challenger, Scott Jensen, a family physician, was enjoying a friendly reception. But when Dr. Jensen deplored policies that he suggested encouraged people to “sit on the couch and watch TV,” Mr. Walz saw an opening.
“What you’ll never hear from your governor is that Minnesotans are lazy,” Mr. Walz declared.
“If you truly believe in the people, invest in our children, invest in our teachers,” he thundered, “and don’t you dare call us lazy.”
The moment illustrated Mr. Walz’s ability to think on his feet, a skill he will need against Mr. Vance, an aggressive communicator.
Mr. Walz, by contrast, has done few national news media interviews since joining Ms. Harris’s ticket, making him less tested in the kind of spotlight he will face on Tuesday.
Those who have worked with him on past debates say he does not particularly enjoy the format or the preparations, preferring retail politics in less scripted settings instead. (Mr. Vance is said to love debates.)
And he plainly does not have the smooth lawyerly style of many other politicians.
That is part of his challenge but also his charm, according to longtime Walz observers.
“He’s developed a capacity to just plainly say what he means, in ways that avoid the rhetoric and resonate with people,” said Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul, Minn., who has known Mr. Walz for nearly two decades.
He can throw a punch. He doesn’t like taking them.
At another debate, in October 2022, Mr. Walz demonstrated a command of Dr. Jensen’s record — and showed that he could catch a rival off guard with a calmly delivered blow.
“When Scott was issuing opioid prescriptions, he issued more than 94 percent of his peers,” Mr. Walz said at the debate, hosted by KTTC-TV, a local Minnesota station, as they discussed the opioid crisis. “He did that at the same time while accepting meals from the manufacturers and the pharmaceutical companies.”
Dr. Jensen, taken aback, didn’t dispute the charge.
He and other Republicans who have watched Mr. Walz over the years say the governor is also adept at parrying efforts to pin him down — though Mr. Walz’s supporters see him as a straight shooter.
“He’s just very good at sort of deflecting and avoiding a question,” Dr. Jensen said in an interview.
Handling incoming can be another matter.
At Farmfest, Dr. Jensen suggested Mr. Walz had moved too slowly to deploy the National Guard after the protests-turned-riots that erupted after a police officer murdered George Floyd. Mr. Walz, who had spent much of the forum seated, rose to his feet.
“Having served 24 years in the National Guard, that’s a lot more experience than watching ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and second-guessing where our men and women are putting themselves at risk,” he snapped.
That moment and others throughout his debating history show that Mr. Walz can be rattled onstage, also sometimes flashing signs of irritation at a question or line of argument.
“He gets angry,” Mr. Carter, the mayor of St. Paul, acknowledged. “But I don’t see him get mad and throw away all his cards.”
He has faced particular scrutiny of his stewardship of the post-Floyd moment, an issue that Mr. Vance may be eager to re-litigate Tuesday.
At one point during the KTTC-TV, debate, Mr. Walz said he was “proud of Minnesota’s response, I’m proud of Minnesota’s first responders” during the 2020 protests.
Dr. Jensen, seeking to turn Mr. Walz’s words against him, used the moment to define “Minnesota’s response” in terms of the civil unrest that unfolded. Mr. Walz then said that he had been talking about his pride in the first responders.
Mr. Walz can speak imprecisely or inaccurately at times, an issue that has arisen both in this campaign — on subjects including his National Guard service — and earlier in his career. (Mr. Vance, for his part, has gleefully promoted outlandish and debunked claims, including that Haitian migrants were eating house pets.)
Still, Mr. Walz heads into the debate with a key advantage: Recent polling shows voters view him more favorably than they do Mr. Vance, which may leave him extra leeway with some viewers.
He has a progressive record, but he doesn’t talk like an ideologue.
Mr. Walz’s task on Tuesday will be to promote and defend Ms. Harris’s vision to a bitterly divided country — and he has years of practice reaching across the aisle from the debate stage.
“I don’t have the luxury of being partisan,” he said in that 2006 debate.
He has often positioned himself as a pragmatist. He responded to Democratic criticisms of his past support from the National Rifle Association, for example, by arguing that advancing gun control measures would be achieved through building coalitions, not through enforcing political purity tests.
“It’s about who has the capacity to actually move things that make a difference in people’s lives,” he said in a 2018 Democratic primary debate hosted by MPR News.
In office as governor, however, Mr. Walz developed a more liberal record, and over the course of his debating career he has sounded progressive notes on issues including health care and racial justice.
While the policy positions and past comments of Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris will most likely be more relevant to Tuesday’s debate than those of their running mates, Mr. Vance may try to play on Mr. Walz’s left-leaning record to cast the ticket as overly liberal.
He’s no stranger to defending abortion rights from the debate stage.
Four months after Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees helped overturn Roe v. Wade, Mr. Walz was on the debate stage showing his willingness to use the issue to go on offense.
“There’s a clear contrast here,” he said firmly in that October debate. “My entire career, I’ve trusted women.”
Two years later, the issue of abortion rights remains central to the national campaign. It is a difficult subject for Republicans to navigate, and polls show Democrats with a clear advantage on it even as they struggle with other issues, especially the economy.
Mr. Walz, who has addressed abortion rights for years from the debate stage and in news media interviews, is likely to press it again with Mr. Vance on Tuesday.
“This is about life and death,” he added at that debate. “This is about providers making the most personal decisions with a woman, with nobody else in between them.”
His down-home style has won him unexpected admiration.
In the 2018 primary debate, Mr. Walz declared himself “an eternal optimist” about Minnesota and extolled “the idea that our neighbors may see things a little differently but they share those core values.”
The moment captured his efforts to brand his politics as common-sense and unifying. It’s an approach he uses on the 2024 campaign trail, and one that he will most likely deploy again on Tuesday against a Republican ticket that Democrats argue is divisive and extreme.
Onstage, Mr. Walz often sprinkles his appearances with details from his biography — he is a former high school football coach from rural Nebraska whose family owned a meat locker, he has said — that illustrate why Democrats hope he can help the ticket expand its appeal.
His down-home dialect — saying “set” instead of “sit” and using phrases like “all’s they need to do” — also complicates longtime Republican arguments that the Democratic Party is the party of the coastal elite.
Even political rivals have conceded, however awkwardly, that Mr. Walz can appear relatable and genial.
During the October matchup against Dr. Jensen in 2022, the two candidates were asked to say something nice about the other.
“Tim Walz is an affable individual who has a wonderful smile,” the Republican said.
Whatever the intent or sincerity of that comment, Democrats embraced it, Mr. Carter recalled — and put it on T-shirts.
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