Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly picked Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in part because she approves of his governing record, which includes a slow response to the 2020 riots, aggressive coronavirus policies and more.
Walz has pursued a bevy of left-wing policies since being elected Minnesota’s governor in 2018, during which time he presided over the riots that devastated Minneapolis in the summer of 2020 and responded to the coronavirus pandemic by imposing some of the most draconian lockdown policies of any state in the U.S. Harris, meanwhile, reportedly picked Walz to be her running mate over Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and others in part because she “loved” Walz’s record in Minnesota and wants to replicate some of his feats on issues like abortion and gun control if elected president, according to Politico.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Walz declared a peacetime state of emergency and stringent lockdown measures, setting up a tip line for Minnesotans to report others who were breaking stay-at-home orders and asking residents of his state not to get together to celebrate Thanksgiving. Walz’s health department also devised a plan in 2021 to distribute potentially life-saving medicine on the basis of race to address shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think Tim Walz was the first mistake that Kamala Harris made since her rollout, and his selection just reinforces her radicalism, and also her phoniness, because they’re portraying this guy as if he’s a mainstream moderate, and he’s not. He’s really very radical,” John McLaughlin, a Trump campaign pollster, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Now I know why Minnesota is in play for Trump, because it’s not just a reaction to [Democratic Minnesota Rep.] Ilhan Omar, who supports Tim Walz. It’s a backlash to him because no one knows him outside of Minnesota, but the voters in Minnesota don’t like the direction that the state is headed. They want to go back to times of low inflation, safer cities, safer borders and to get away from big government socialism — and he’s a big government socialist.”
The riots that followed the death of George Floyd caused hundreds of millions of dollars of destruction in Minneapolis under Walz’s watch, and the governor hesitated to call in the National Guard after the rioting exploded, by which time massive damage had already been done, according to The New York Times. Walz also called Minneapolis’ response to the chaos an “abject failure” in a May 2020 press conference, explaining that the city did not have adequate numbers of police or firefighters in position to respond to the unrest as it unfolded.
A report authored by the Minnesota State Senate found that Walz “failed to act in a timely manner” and was “not willing to do what was necessary to stop the rioting right away because he was having a philosophical debate about whether the use of force should be used to stop violence” in deciding how to respond to the riots.
Former President Donald Trump praised Walz for eventually calling up “big numbers” of National Guard personnel to quell the riots at the time, according to ABC News. Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt has clarified that Trump’s praise for Walz’s response to the chaos was specifically in reference to his eventual decision to call in the National Guard and not in reference to what happened in the days before Walz made that move.
“Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis,” Leavitt said in a statement shared with ABC News. “In this daily briefing phone call with Governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump acknowledged Governor Walz for FINALLY taking action to deploy the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”
Walz has also pursued green energy mandates for his state, turned Minnesota into a de facto haven for late-term abortions, established a panel to assess state actions through a “lens of equity,” signed a law enabling the state to make custody determinations if a child is denied access to sex-change operations and enacted legislation allowing illegal immigrants to receive driver licenses.
Additionally, in 2023, Walz and his fellow Minnesota Democrats managed to spend an $18 billion budget surplus while also enacting a total tax hike of $10 billion, according to Forbes. Jared Walczak of the Tax Foundation noted Tuesday that Minnesota, under Walz’s leadership, has also been one of the few states in the country to raise taxes at a time when many states have been cutting them to be economically competitive.
Jon McHenry, a GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research, told the DCNF that Republicans would be wise to hit Walz for his record without overdoing it and distracting voters from Harris, who has her own past policy positions and a record serving as vice president in the Biden administration.
“I think he comes off as a likable guy, and the mainstream media and Democrats are going to lean into that. His record is going to be a problem, especially with the working-class voters in the Midwest. Republicans have to balance telling that story — exposing Walz on his record — with not getting obsessed with him at the expense of running against Vice President Harris,” McHenry told the DCNF. “Spending too much time on Walz gives Harris a longer runway without scrutiny, so Republicans will need to multitask, pointing out that his record is exactly what we would expect as the running mate for the most liberal senator during her time in the Senate.”
The Harris campaign and Walz’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
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