Good evening! Kamala Harris announced today that she has picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, finalizing the Democratic ticket that was completely uncertain just a few weeks ago and setting the stage for a 90-day race to Election Day. Here’s what you need to know.
Will Tim Walz Change the Race?
If we had told you a month ago that the governor of Minnesota would be on the Democratic presidential ticket in November, you probably would have thought we were loony — and you almost certainly would have struggled to name him. Yet on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, chose that relatively little-known Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, to be her No. 2.
It’s another sign of how quickly this presidential contest has changed over the last 16 days, since President Joe Biden abandoned his bid for a second term.
Over the past two weeks, Walz emerged as a dark horse vice-presidential contender alongside other potential choices who were thought to offer more obvious electoral benefits, including Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, both popular officials from key swing states.
Who is Tim Walz? The 60-year-old Walz is now in his second term as Minnesota governor. He also is chair of the Democratic Governors Association. But he didn’t enter politics until he was in his 40s.
“He grew up in a small town in Nebraska, spending summers working on his family’s farm,” Harris wrote in an Instagram post. “His father died of cancer when he was 19, and his family relied on Social Security survivor benefit checks to make ends meet.”
Walz went on to serve for 24 years in the Army National Guard and worked as a high school teacher and football coach. He retired from the Guard in 2005 as a master sergeant, but had previously served as a command sergeant major, one of the top enlisted ranks.
After winning a long-shot bid for Congress in 2006, Walz served six terms in the House from 2007 to 2019, repeatedly winning elections in a Republican-leaning, rural district. He was ranked the 7th most bipartisan House member during the 114th Congress and the 88th most bipartisan in the 115th Congress according to The Lugar Center and the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy.
As governor, his record is decidedly more liberal. He is known for providing free school breakfast and lunch, implementing tuition-free college for low-income residents, defending abortion rights and legalizing recreational marijuana for adults. He received some criticism for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
What Walz brings to the Democratic ticket: Walz is expected to bring a broad, folksy appeal to the ticket that Harris clearly hopes will win over working-class voters in the “Blue Wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Harris’s choice of Walz “could be a play to widen her party’s polished coastal image — or an attempt to placate her party’s left wing,” The Washington Post’s editorial board suggests. “Most likely, it was both.”
Described as a happy warrior, Walz has already won praise among Democrats this election cycle for his political messaging portraying former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance as “weird.” And his selection was met with positive statements from a broad range of Democrats.
“As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his own,” Harris said in a statement. “We are going to build a great partnership. We start out as underdogs but I believe together, we can win this election.”
The Trump campaign immediately sought to paint Walz as a “radical leftist” who had enacted a liberal in his state. “It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Trump Campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Walz has embraced the liberal label. Asked by CNN recently if his record would provide fodder for Trump’s attacks calling him “a big government liberal,” he responded with a dose of sarcasm.
“What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions. And we're a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness,” he said, adding, “Oh, and, by the way, you're going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you're going to have health insurance. So, if that's where they want to label me, I'm more than happy to take the label.”
The Washington Post’s editorial board warns that Walz’s fiscal record might warrant caution when translated to the national level: “Mr. Walz increased the state budget by 40 percent and spent most of a $17.5 billion state surplus. He signed off on a new child tax credit, free school breakfast and lunch for K-12 students and billions of dollars on affordable housing and infrastructure. He signed a law to mandate utilities go carbon-free by 2040.”
But Walz reportedly has pushed back on some arguments about fiscal responsibility. “The idea that you’re somehow more fiscally responsible by NOT investing in education, healthcare, and transportation makes a nice political talking point—but it makes no sense,” he said in 2018, according to The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein. “Not when we could have a better educated, healthier workforce that lives longer and contributes more to the economy.”
What’s next: After a joint rally in Philadelphia this evening, Harris and Walz are scheduled to appear in four other battleground states over the coming days, making campaign stops in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. Two planned events in North Carolina and Georgia have been postponed due to Tropical Storm Debby.
The bottom line: Walz was, in many ways, a safe pick. He’s considered the most liberal of Harris’s VP contenders, but the selection of a relatable, populist progressive may calm the left wing of the party and add some Midwestern appeal while potentially allowing Harris to run to the center.
Chart of the Day: Probably Not a Recession
Global markets rebounded after a rough Monday, with the S&P 500 rising a bit more than 1% during trading hours as worries about a slowing U.S. economy and the Japanese yen eased. Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal said Tuesday that while the risk of recession appears to have risen, it’s pretty clear that the U.S. isn’t in one right now, even if the widely cited Sahm Rule — which holds that whenever the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate rises half a percentage point above its 12-month low, the economy is entering a recession — was triggered last week.
Ip argues that three indicators used by the National Bureau of Economic Research provide a better sense of where the economy stands: payroll employment, industrial production and real (inflation-adjusted) incomes, minus government transfers. In the recessions of 1990, 2001 and 2008, which were successfully identified by the Sahm Rule, all three of the NBER indicators were falling in the months preceding the rule’s trigger. Currently, however, all of those indicators are positive.
“In the four months through July, payrolls were growing, and in the three months through June, so were real incomes and industrial production,” Ip writes. “If a recession had already begun, it would be a very unusual one.”
National Uninsured Rate Rises in 2024
After hitting a record low of 7.2% last year, the percentage of the U.S. population without health insurance rose to 8.2% in the first quarter of 2024, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 27.1 million people lacked health insurance in the first three months of the year, an increase of 3.4 million from the same period a year earlier.
The increase represents a reversal of a trend toward greater coverage, driven largely by the expansion of public healthcare programs during the pandemic. Before 2020, the uninsured rate was typically more than 10%, even after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Before the ACA, it was typically over 17%.
The suspension of disenrollments from the Medicaid program during the pandemic was a particularly powerful factor in reducing the uninsured rate, since it eliminated the regular purges performed by states that often included enrollees who were eligible for coverage but who failed to fulfill bureaucratic requirements such as timely paperwork. Now that routine disenrollments have resumed, millions of Medicaid enrollees are once again being eliminated from the program on a regular basis.
The proportion of people in public health programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, fell by two-tenths of a percentage point at the beginning of the year, dropping from 39.9% in the final quarter of 2023 to 39.2% in the first quarter of 2024. The proportion of people with private insurance held steady at 60.8%.
Fiscal News Roundup
- Harris Picks Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for Running Mate – NBC News
- 55 Things to Know About Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ Pick for VP – Politico
- Why Kamala Harris Chose Tim Walz – Politico
- 71 Percent of Americans Have Never Heard of Walz: Poll – The Hill
- Your Tim Walz Policy Guide: Where He Stands on Abortion, Unions, Energy and More – Politico
- Harris’ Running Mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Boasts Progressive Health Care Record – STAT
- Tim Walz on Healthcare: 8 Things to Know – Becker Hospital Review
- As Trump Fumes, Republicans Wince at ‘Public Nervous Breakdown’ – Politico
- Number of Americans Without Health Insurance Rises in 2024, Breaking Streak of Record-Low Figures – CBS News
- Study Puts a $43 Billion Yearly Price Tag on Cancer Screening – New York Times
- Gulf Widens Between Rich and Poor Hospitals – Axios
- How the Landmark Climate Law Hobbled Joe Manchin – Politico
- Despite Monday’s Turmoil, the American Consumer Is Still Powering the U.S. Economy – Washington Post
Views and Analysis
- Tim Walz Is a Bold, Smart Choice for Harris’s Running Mate – Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post
- What Walz Brings to the Harris Campaign — and What It Still Needs to Show – Washington Post Editorial Board
- Picking Tim Walz Was Kamala Harris’s First Campaign Mistake – Matt K. Lewis, The Hill
- 5 Takeaways From Harris’s Pick of Tim Walz as Her VP Nominee – Aaron Blake, Washington Post
- What Harris Picking Gov. Tim Walz as VP Means for Her Electoral Strategy – Myah Ward, Politico
- Tim Walz: From Small-Town Minnesota to the Campaign Trail – David Dayen, American Prospect
- Is Tim Walz the Midwestern Dad Democrats Need? – Ezra Klein, New York Times
- Why Tim Walz Will Be a Potent Weapon for Kamala Harris – Ross Barkan, New York Times
- Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Need to Pivot to the Center Right Now – Jonathan Chait, New York
- Compare the Candidates on Health Care Policy – KFF
- This Doesn’t Look Like Recession. Here’s How One Could Happen – Greg Ip, Wall Street Journal
- We’re Likely Not in a Recession — but We Could Talk Ourselves Into One – Catherine Rampell, Washington Post
- Recession Fears May Be Overstated, but Not Unfounded – Ben Casselman, New York Times
- The Real Economic Catastrophe Will Be Caused by the U.S. Debt – Brian Riedl, Reason
- Trump’s Fusillade of Falsehoods on Debt and Taxes – Glenn Kessler, Washington Post