Who is Tim Walz? Things to know about Kamala Harris's choice for vice-president

U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris's pick for her running mate as she campaigns for the White House is Tim Walz — the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota whose labelling of Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race as "weird" became a viral insult that the Harris campaign has embraced.

Walz rose to the forefront with a series of plain-spoken television appearances in the days after President Joe Biden decided not to seek a second term. He has made his state a bastion of liberal policy and, this year, one of the few states to protect fans buying tickets online for Taylor Swift concerts and other live events.

He comes from rural America, and it would be hard to find a more vivid representative of the American heartland than Walz. Born in West Point, Neb., a community of about 3,500 people northwest of Omaha, Walz joined the U.S. Army National Guard and became a teacher.

He and his wife moved to Mankato in southern Minnesota in the 1990s. That's where he taught social studies and coached football at Mankato West High School, including for the 1999 team that won the first of the school's four state championships. He still points to his union membership there.

Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring from a field artillery battalion in 2005 as a command sergeant major, one of the military's highest enlisted ranks.

Record of connecting with conservative voters

In his first race for Congress, Walz upset a Republican incumbent. That was in 2006, when he won in a largely rural, southern Minnesota congressional district against six-term Rep. Gil Gutknecht. Walz capitalized on voter anger with then-president George W. Bush and the Iraq war.

During six terms in the U.S. House, Walz championed veterans' issues.

He's also shown a down-to-earth side, partly through social media video posts with his daughter, Hope. One last fall showed them trying a Minnesota State Fair ride, "The Slingshot," after they bantered about fair food and her being a vegetarian.

Could get support in key Midwest states

While Walz isn't from one of the crucial "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where both sides believe they need to win, he's right next door. He also could ensure that Minnesota stays in the hands of Democrats.

That's important because Trump has portrayed Minnesota as being in play this year, even though the state hasn't elected a Republican to statewide office since 2006. A Republican presidential candidate hasn't carried the state since former president Richard Nixon's landslide in 1972, but Trump has already campaigned there.

When Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton decided not to seek a third term in 2018, Walz campaigned and won the office on a "One Minnesota" theme.

Backing workers' rights 

Walz also speaks comfortably about issues that matter to voters in the Rust Belt. He's been a champion of Democratic causes, including union organizing, workers' rights and a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

In his first term as governor, Walz faced a legislature split between a Democratic-led House and a Republican-controlled Senate that resisted his proposals to use higher taxes to boost money for schools, health care and roads. But he and lawmakers brokered compromises that made the state's divided government still seem productive.

Bipartisan co-operation became tougher during his second year as he used the governor's emergency power during the COVID-19 pandemic to shutter businesses and close schools. Republicans pushed back and forced out some agency heads. Republicans also remain critical of Walz over what they see as his slow response to sometimes violent unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

Things got easier for Walz in his second term, after he defeated Republican Scott Jensen, a physician known nationally as a vaccine skeptic. Democrats gained control of both legislative chambers, clearing the way for a more liberal course in state government, aided by a huge budget surplus.

Walz and lawmakers eliminated nearly all of the state abortion restrictions enacted in the past by Republicans, protected gender-affirming care for transgender youth and legalized the recreational use of marijuana.

Rejecting Republican pleas that the state budget surplus be used to cut taxes, Democrats funded free school meals for children, free tuition at public colleges for students in families earning under $80,000 a year, a paid family and medical leave program and health insurance coverage regardless of a person's immigration status.

An ear for sound-bite politics

Walz called Republican nominee Donald Trump and running mate J.D. Vance "just weird" in an MSNBC interview last month and the Democratic Governors Association — which Walz chairs — amplified the point in a post on X.

He used the word on the social media platform on July 25, encouraging X users, "Say it with me: Weird" in response to a Trump campaign speech in North Carolina and included a video clip of Trump talking about fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film Silence of the Lambs.

A few days later, Walz reiterated the characterization on CNN, citing Trump's repeated mentions of Lecter in stump speeches.

The word quickly morphed into a theme for Harris and other Democrats, and has a chance to be a watchword of the undoubtedly weird 2024 election.