Shortly after Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was tapped by Vice President Kamala Harris to be her running mate, a photo of Mr. Walz at the Minnesota State Fair in 2019 went viral.
He wore a gold University of Minnesota T-shirt, a maroon University of Minnesota hat emblazoned with the Gophers mascot and a smile that his face could barely contain. In his arms was a small, sleeping piglet.
It was peak Midwestern dad energy — one of the regular-guy reasons that Ms. Harris chose him to join the Democratic ticket despite his limited national profile. Over the last few weeks, Mr. Walz has been on a whirlwind tour introducing himself to the rest of the country. He has campaigned before crowds of over 10,000 in battleground states like Wisconsin and Georgia; hosted fund-raisers in California and Maryland; and completed his transformation into a party leader with a rousing speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
But Mr. Walz will need no introduction when he steps back onto the grounds of the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul on Sunday, where he is expected to make a campaign stop.
“Oh, he is?!” asked Keri Huber, an archivist at the fair. To be sure, it was no surprise to her, but she had yet to hear the news because, she explained, she had been on the grounds, working nonstop.
Like other state fairs happening across the nation, the Minnesota State Fair, affectionately known as the Great Minnesota Get Together, has a storied political tradition as a spot to woo voters in a less-scripted forum. Over the years, it has been an opportunity for once and future officeholders to appear, well, normal, while chowing down pronto pups — which, depending on whom you ask, are not so different from corn dogs — and buckets of Sweet Martha’s cookies and posing for photos.
The fair, which goes through Labor Day, is a good place for politicians to hit a lot of demographics at once, Ms. Huber said. This year, people from 50 states and 36 countries have already purchased tickets.
Ms. Huber has personal experience trailing Mr. Walz and other politicians through the event.
She began rattling off a list:
Senator Warren G. Harding went to the fair in September 1920, two months before being elected president. In 1980, the independent presidential candidate John Anderson and the vice-presidential candidate Walter Mondale, another Minnesotan, came to the fairgrounds. And in 1987, the presidential hopefuls Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, and Gov. Michael Dukakis, Democrat of Massachusetts, followed suit.
Rudy Boschwitz, a Republican senator from Minnesota from 1978 to 1991, famously set up a milk stand at the fair in the 1980s and 1990s. He served various milk flavors — from amaretto to root beer — while shaking hands and talking to voters.
In 2019, the presidential hopefuls Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, and Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, went to the fairgrounds to shake hands. (Ms. Klobuchar comes to the fair quite often and is “certainly a fan,” Ms. Huber said. Yes, she already went to the fair this year.)
“It just becomes a town every day,” Ms. Huber said. Usually, a nice day at the fair brings 180,000 people, she said. That number can swell to 270,000.
Many politicians set up booths, and anyone who is approved through a standard application process is welcome to do so, Ms. Huber said. This year, two booths in particular have already attracted plenty of attention.
There is the “Never Walz” booth, now in its fourth year, which gives out paper fans inscribed with the slogan. The booth is funded by a conservative group called Action 4 Liberty. And there is the booth operated by the state’s Democratic Party, the Democratic-Farmer–Labor Party, where the supply of Harris-Walz camo hats sold out in less than an hour on opening day, according to the D.F.L.
As the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Mr. Walz may have a slightly different fair experience than in years past. In 2018 and 2019, he participated in the fair’s “Agrilympics” butter-carving contest. His 2019 carving? A small school bus. He earned a ribbon for honorable mention. Last year, he rode the Slingshot — one of the fair’s most extreme rides — with his daughter, Hope.
When asked whether she thought Mr. Walz might stop at the Miracle of Birth Center, where farm animals give birth on any given day, Ms. Huber was quick to correct this Minnesotan reporter. That was not where Mr. Walz held a piglet in 2019.
“That was actually,” she said politely, “the Oink Booth.”
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