Tim Walz
Tim Walz has been Governor of Minnesota since 2019 and was the Democratic nominee for vice-president in 2024. Born in West Point, Nebraska in 1964 and raised in a small town in the state, he joined the Army National Guard at seventeen and served twenty-four years, retiring in 2005 as a command sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks. He taught geography and social studies and coached high-school football in Mankato, Minnesota, where he was the faculty adviser to the school's first gay-straight alliance in the late 1990s. He and his wife also ran educational tours in China, where he had taught for a year in 1989-90. He was elected to Congress in 2006 for Minnesota's first district, a largely rural Republican-leaning seat he held for six terms, and became the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. As governor he signed a large expansion of state programmes after Democrats won full control in 2023: universal free school meals, paid family and medical leave, a child tax credit, codified abortion rights, legalised recreational cannabis, driver's licences regardless of immigration status, and restoration of voting rights for people on parole. His most difficult period was the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 and the unrest that followed; he was criticised for the pace at which he deployed the National Guard as buildings including a police precinct burned. Kamala Harris chose him as running mate in August 2024, after his description of Republican opponents as weird gained wide currency. The ticket lost to Donald Trump and JD Vance, and Walz returned to the governorship. He is the first Minnesota governor to serve as a running mate on a national ticket since Walter Mondale.
- Lived: 1964 CE – ?
- Nationality: American
- Roles: governor
