Tim Walz has never lost an election in Minnesota. That record will remain intact following his Monday announcement that he is dropping out of the race for reelection to a third term as governor.
Turns out being the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024 was the worst thing that ever happened to Walz’s political career.
He won six U.S. House races, starting with a 2006 upset over a GOP incumbent, but remained relatively obscure and kept a low profile in the House. He won two terms as governor by comfortable margins. And he and Kamala Harris carried his home state in 2024 by four points.
Former vice president Kamala Harris said in her book that the 61-year-old was not her first choice for running mate. That was then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, but Harris didn’t believe Americans could vote for a Black woman and a gay man at the same time. Walz’s straightness, and plainness, seemed to make him the safer choice.
Safer for Harris, that is. Under the intense glare of the national spotlight, Walz’s under-examined record didn’t hold up. A tough congressional race is nothing compared to being on a major-party presidential ticket.
Scrutiny of Walz’s past statements wasn’t flattering. He had said he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. He was in Nebraska. He had described certain guns as “weapons of war that I carried in war.” He never saw combat during his time in the National Guard. His go-to defense was Midwestern folksiness and that he just “speaks like everybody else.”
But his actual governing record was more troubling than his verbal flubs. As rampant welfare fraud in Minnesota has resulted in a cascade of federal indictments, Walz has insisted that he was focused all along on cleaning up fraud. If that’s true, he’s really bad at cleaning up fraud, because the problem exploded under his governorship.
Conservatives have been critical of Walz’s performance for seven years, especially his draconian restrictions during the covid pandemic. He took advantage of unified Democratic control in St. Paul to sign into law a laundry list of far-reaching progressive priorities and hiking taxes to pay for them.
Ultimately, Walz might have prevailed by using President Donald Trump as a foil in what is poised to a be a good midterm year for Democrats nationally, but it would have been tough sledding. As swing voters increasingly felt Walz fatigue, an electable Republican alternative — not Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy — could have toppled him.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D), expected to announce she will run for governor now that Walz is out, would be the prohibitive favorite. She is a serious and savvy legislator who would do the country a service by cleaning up the fraud mess and focusing on pro-growth policy in her home state.
Harris and Walz might both wish that Harris had selected Buttigieg instead, though that ticket also probably would have lost.
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