Minnesota Spice: Gov. Tim Walz, a Harris VP contender, delights Democrats with MAGA mockery

(CNN) — The way Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz tells it, the stakes of the coming presidential election are both astronomically high and strikingly simple.

On one side, the former high school teacher and congressman says, is Vice President Kamala Harris – a serious, competent and experienced candidate whom he believes is aligned with Americans’ best interests.

Across the way, Walz insists, is former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance – a pair of “weird dudes” using populist and, in Vance’s case, implausibly homespun rhetoric to disguise their dangerous political agenda.

That kind of clear and caustic messaging, delivered with an ebullient Minnesota accent, has transformed Walz from a relatively anonymous – despite his estimable progressive record – Midwestern Democrat to a potential vice presidential pick for Harris. At the same time, Walz is carving out a new – at least to polite liberal politics – line of attack on MAGA movement Republican leaders, whom he has repeatedly described as “strange” while railing against both their political agenda and public manners.

Walz was, again, a swirl of acid and honey during his remark on Monday night to the “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom fundraiser. This time out, though, he also sounded every bit the former high school football coach, first asking supporters to “keep hammering on” Trump and Vance, to “shrink them.”

Then he offered the evening’s headline.

“How often in a hundred days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in a hundred days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come?” Walz asked. “And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his a**, sent him on the road?”

The host of the call, Ross Morales Rocketto, thanked the governor, before drolly observing, “I see why everybody is so excited about you.”

For allies in Minnesota, Walz’s happy introduction to the national political stage is surprising more for the unpredictable nature of the moment than his chops, which they told CNN can go underappreciated in part because of the focus on the so-called “Blue Wall” state leaders lined up to his east. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, another potential running mate, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have been unavoidable since Biden stood down and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, with a similar political style to Walz, has also raised his profile over the past 10 days.

Walz’s six years in charge of Minnesota have seen a remarkable series of political and social upheaval. First came the Covid-19 pandemic and then, in its midst, the murder of George Floyd by a White police officer, which set off global anti-racist demonstrations. Walz navigated it all – alongside more usual complaints over wasteful spending – well enough that, by the beginning of 2023, he was leading a Democratic trifecta in the state government.

An approving tweet from former President Barack Obama in May 2023 was a notable marker on Walz’s deliberate ascent, when he linked to a MinnPost report about the legislature’s “transformational” session – a progressive “wish list” turned “to-do list,” as Walz said then, which included codifying abortion rights in a post-Roe v. Wade world, adding protections for transgender people, passing paid sick and family leave, expanding voting rights and investing public funds in affordable housing.

“If you need a reminder that elections have consequences,” Obama wrote, “check out what’s happening in Minnesota.”

It took some time, but now they are. Fergus Falls, Minnesota, Mayor Ben Schierer, who has worked closely with the governor, said he isn’t surprised.

“Whether he is on Fox News or MSNBC or at Union Pizza in Fergus Falls with me, he’s the same guy,” Schierer, first elected to his nonpartisan office in 2016, told CNN. “The thing that people probably didn’t understand – he’s entirely unafraid. Entirely unafraid. I would also add, he’s entirely undefeated.”

Walz spent more than two decades in the Army National Guard, which included a deployment overseas after the 9/11 attacks, working as an educator and coach, before shockingly defeating a six-term Republican incumbent congressman in 2006, a wave year for Democrats. Walz remained when the tide rolled out, reelected to the typically red district repeatedly until he left to run for his current job in 2018. (The seat quickly returned to GOP control after his departure.)

“He is able to connect with people who you don’t necessarily think about as being part of the Democratic coalition in these Midwestern states, which means rural Whites,” a progressive strategist with close ties to Minnesota Democrats told CNN. “They seem to like the way he speaks, they seem to like the little turns of language, the metaphors he will use.”

As his hand in St. Paul has grown stronger over the past few years, Walz has seemed emboldened. In a time when progressive Democrats frequently criticize the party and its moderate leadership for not being ruthless enough with the power they have, the charge has rarely been leveled against Walz.

“When he first ran for governor, his slogan or mantra was called ‘ONE Minnesota’ and he kept emphasizing the idea that ‘I can work across aisle.’ ‘I can unite people,’” Hamline University political science professor David Schultz told CNN. “But once he got that trifecta, his message shifted to: ‘This is what we can do with single party control, the era of gridlock is over.’”

Schultz did suggest that Walz has been running out an even feistier side of late as he vies for a place on the Democratic presidential ticket.

“One of the things that’s really surprised me in the last few weeks is how good of a pit bull Walz is becoming,” Shultz said. “Especially with his comments about Vance.”

Walz appears to relish going after Trump’s running mate and fellow “small-town” Midwesterner. That familiarity, as Walz frames it, has bred severe contempt.

“There’s one golden rule in a small town, (for) those of you aren’t from a small town. Mind your own damn business,” Walz said. “We don’t need ‘em. I don’t know who’s asking for this crazy stuff that they’re pushing. Who’s asking to ban birth control? Who’s asking to raise the price of insulin?”

He was just getting started.

Addressing a virtual gathering that raised $4 million for the Harris campaign by Monday night’s end, Walz also tested the foreign policy waters, insisting that Americans in the coming election have a responsibility to the rest of the planet.

“We’re not in this alone. The rest of the world needs us to be here,” he said. “These guys throwing our NATO allies under the bus, the idea that they don’t care what happens in the rest of the world, not addressing climate change that’s going to impact communities that are less fortunate than anyone else.”

He closed with a mix of Minnesota nice and partisan spice, beseeching Democrats to get organized, ruthless and on the offensive.

“Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values,” Walz said. “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

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