The NPR Politics Podcast - Minn. Gov. Tim Walz Picked As Harris' Running Mate

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Walz, 60, is a veteran and former schoolteacher who has been governor of Minnesota since 2019. Why did Harris pick him, and what does he bring to the Democratic ticket?This podcast: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Rachel Duke in San Antonio, Texas, on a nice 80-degree morning listening to the cicadas. It'll be 100 degrees later today, and all I will hear is the air conditioning units. This podcast was recorded at 11.08 a.m. on Tuesday, August 6th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'm sure the cicadas and the air conditioning units will still be going. I find that noise so great, even though in the summer, cicadas. They kind of sounded like crickets. I like the cricket sounds. I like the sound of air conditioning in 100 degree weather. Air conditioning, crickets, and rain sound nice to fall asleep to.

Don't fall asleep for this podcast. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today, the vice president has selected her vice president, Kamala Harris, has tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to serve as her running mate. They'll hold their first rally together later today in Philadelphia. Domenico, let's just start with the basics. Who is this guy?

Yeah, Tim Walls is the governor of Minnesota. He's the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, which Democrats hope means that he can bring in some cash. He's in his second term as governor. He was a former congressman. He won in a pretty Republican district and he grew up in Nebraska, rural Nebraska. They think that maybe he can appeal to some of those rural voters who Democrats struggle mightily, Michigan and Pennsylvania are the three blue wall states that if Kamala Harris holds, then she likely wins the presidency. Asma, by all accounts, this decision came down to the wire. Our colleague Tamara Keith was reporting that the decision was made just this morning. The campaign had even printed out signs with different names on it because they weren't sure who exactly the running mate would be. So what was it about Walls, you think, that ultimately sold Harris on him in the end? Well, we know that Harris was looking for someone that she was compatible with and someone who had executive experience. And a source familiar with the process told us that, you know, there were a few things that impressed her about the Minnesota governor.

One is his bio, as you suggested there, Domenico. He was a former football coach, and he also had experience in Congress representing a district that was, you know, some folks would say more conservative over the years. But also, you know, what we were told is that she has been looking for someone who has executive experience on trying to really root for the middle class and somebody who has a record of enacting policies that she's really interested in looking at as well. You know, things like the child tax credit, paid family leave, gun safety measures. So he cuts a moderate profile with progressive policy. So Democrats on Capitol Hill really liked him. Progressives are a big fan of

his. And, you know, because of that, seems like he two weeks ago was not somebody who anybody had on the front of their minds talking about as a potential VP and edged out somebody like Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, who a lot of people thought was the front runner for the job. record, but presents differently. And I think part of what gave Walls some traction, certainly at least on social media, was in the short, veep-stakes time, he did a lot of cable news hits, and he seemed to present as a really effective communicator for Democrats. And one of the things that he sort of coined is this new attack on Republicans where he's campaigning against them as being, quote, weird. And this is a message that Walls has been using in television hits like he did on CNN just last month. People kept talking about, look, Donald Trump is going to put women's lives at risk. That's 100 percent true. Donald Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have in voting. I do believe all those things are a real possibility, but it gives him way too much power. Listen to the guy. He's talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind. And I thought we just gave

him way too much credit. And I think one of the things is, is when you just ratchet down some of the, you know, the scariness or whatever, and just name it what it is. I got to tell you, my observation on this is, have you ever seen the guy laugh? That seems very weird to me that an adult can go through six and a half years of being in the public eye. If he has laughed, it's at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior. You know, Sue, you and I have talked about how this election really is about normal versus extreme. And whoever can really grab hold of normal is the most important thing. And it's interesting that he's sort of turned extreme into weird, which is a kind of phrase that seems sort of down home and something that Democrats at least hope can appeal to those normal people, quote unquote, in the upper Midwest. And to that point, the idea

that Walls would be this effective messenger and has really sort of set himself apart by this language of weird was something that we heard from a source familiar with the process actually did really elevate him in this race. I also think it's interesting because it's an attack that has clearly gotten under the skin of their opponents because Donald Trump has felt the need to respond to it. Well, they're the weird ones. And if you've ever seen her with the laugh and everything else, that's a weird deal going on there. They're the weird ones. Nobody's ever called me weird. I'm a lot of things, but weird I'm not. And I'm upfront. And he's not either, I will tell you. J.D. is not at all. They are. I'm not weird. You're weird. I didn't expect this chapter in the election either.

I mean, I think what's interesting is Donald Trump is so familiar with being the one who characterizes people, who labels them, right? That was all what we saw during that 2016 Republican primary process. And so he's kind of on his back foot here now, having to defend himself against a caricature. And that's not his normal position. That's not what he's used to. I don't think they saw this weird attack coming at all. Yes. I didn't either, to be clear. And the fact that it stuck, right, is I think different. And, you know, I think that clearly is something that he brings to the table, Walls, where he doesn't try to demonize Republicans and get kind of angry in the way that,

you know, a lot of people on the left feel toward Donald Trump. You know, the left really, really doesn't want Donald Trump to be in the White House. But Walls sort of does it in a way where he's talking with a glint in his eye and he doesn't want to alienate the voters, the people who voted maybe for Donald Trump or who might be thinking about weighing Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk more about Walz's record. And we're back. And Walz has been governor of Minnesota since 2019.

Domenico, what has he done in office that you think stands out or more politically speaking, what could be used for or against him? Well, he's clearly enacted a bunch of progressive policies, which progressives have liked. But, you know, there are going to be things that Republicans are going to try to use against the Harris-Walls ticket because of some of those progressive policies, including on policing. For example, he was the governor of Minnesota when George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. And there were there was unrest in the streets. And a lot of Republicans see that as not being as pro law enforcement as he should be. I don't know how much that sticks, considering that people really are voting for the top of the ticket more than they are voting for a vice president.

And people are going to judge someone like Walls based on what they hear in interviews going forward. And what our NPR PBS News Marist poll that's out today finds is that 71 percent of people don't have an opinion of Tim Walz. They don't know who he is. So there's going to be a lot in the next week or two that are really going to define not just Walz, but the Harris-Walz ticket. I mean, Asma, I think it might be fair to call him one of the most successfully progressive governors in the country right now. He's signed into law things to expand abortion rights, restrict gun rights. You mentioned paid family leave, the labor movement loves him. Lowering the cost of insulin. Yeah. I mean, he protected

reproductive rights. He had a friendly legislature to work with, right? I mean, that's part of the equation is that he was governor and able to enact these policies because he had this trifecta that helped him do it. So yes, I mean, folks on the left, I've been getting a whole flurry of emails from them praising this choice. Folks on the right, very disenchanted. I mean, you're hearing the Trump campaign describe him as a dangerously liberal extremist. I would make the case, though, that whoever Harris would have chosen, there would have been attacks on their ideological vision. The question is whether characterizing this Midwestern governor as being a dangerous

liberal extremist will stick. What Democratic strategists have told me is that they feel like that this pick certainly fires up the base. And what they also look at is the fact that people like Joe Manchin even praised Tim Walz as someone who can, quote, bring normalcy back to D.C. So if you have the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party seemingly unified without throwing him under the bus or trying to kneecap his prospects, as they did to another candidate who was thought to be a potential vice presidential pick, then just in that way, it's a big win for Democrats because it's a unifying pick. Can we talk for a second about the path Harris did not take, which it seemed in the end it was ultimately between walls and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. The launch event today is in Philadelphia. Domenico, you have spoken often about how critical Pennsylvania is to Democrats' hopes in this election, probably the most must-win state for them. So a bit of a surprise that she didn't choose the guy who's won statewide three times. I'd say 24 hours ago, he was the favorite and who everybody kind of thought was going to be the pick. And you started to hear some rumblings about Tim Walz and how well Kamala Harris got

along with Walz during their interviews over the weekend. You know, it is a little surprising that she didn't go with somebody like Shapiro because of how focused this entire race has been on Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign, for example, has spent 77% of all of the ad money that Trump and the people supporting him on Pennsylvania and Georgia. $50 million has been spent in Pennsylvania just from the Trump campaign, about $70 million from the Democrats. It is like the place where everybody is thinking, you know, the election could come down to. So when you have a governor with a 60 plus percent approval rating and the fact that VPs don't really affect a whole lot except maybe a couple points for their home state, that was seeming like a potential pick on paper that would have made a

lot of sense. You know, she is somebody who herself has been the number two for a number of years. And I get the sense that she is attuned to the challenges of what that means. And, you know, she came into the job, you could argue, for electoral reasons. Biden saw the map and thought he really needed to energize the base. And by choosing a woman of color that would do that. And she struggled at the outset. You know, people were used to her being an independent star of her own. And what she was the outset. People were used to her being an independent star of her own. And what she was really looking for in this process was a governing partner. And am I saying that Josh Shapiro would not have been that? Sure, he could have been a governing

partner. But I think also when you look at him, he seemed to have more independent ambitions than someone like Tim Walz does. Well, I mean, the fact is all politicians have ambition. And I think that it's a little bit of an ego thing to not pick somebody because you think they might have too much ambition. At the same time, I understand that, like, you want to have a vibe with somebody. You want to be able to govern with them. But you have to win first. And I think that if they don't win, there's going to be a lot of people who look back at this pick. And if they lose by a point or two in Pennsylvania, people are going to be raising their eyebrows saying, I think Harris maybe got a little bit

out ahead of her skis. And look, there's also an issue with Shapiro that I don't think we can overlook is that for many people in the Democratic base, he was seen as too closely aligned with Israel and not critical enough of what was happening in Gaza, which has been a hugely animating issue for Democrats. You know, there has been a chunk of the Democratic base, the left of the party, that has been extremely frustrated and upset with how President Biden has handled the war in Gaza. And so in the last few weeks, as you saw Governor Josh Shapiro's name rise up to the top of the list for VP picks, there was a lot of digging into his past about his support for Israel, some of the comments that he made about protests on college campuses.

And then there were folks who supported him who accused these critics of being anti-Semitic. You know, her husband, the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, is a strong supporter of Israel and has been really the leading voice for this administration on anti-Semitism. But it was in the atmosphere the last couple of weeks. I mean, the thing said about Shapiro online on social media in the last week has really been heated and somewhat surprising how vitriolic it's gotten, especially considering, you know, his position as potentially somebody who Harris was clearly looking at as a finalist for the job and somebody who they felt at least could have helped in a place like Pennsylvania.

But it clearly exposed this rift with the left and just how salient this issue is, certainly for people who are on social media from the left. I want to ask you both this. We can now the tickets are now set. Donald Trump, J.D. Vance versus Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And what strikes me about these two tickets is they are arguably one of the most conservative and one of the most progressiveanor, right? I mean, Trump has said previously that he's happy to carry the mantle of anger. That's not the way that Kamala Harris has campaigned so far. I'd say she's had a sunnier disposition than even Joe Biden had had. Joe Biden was very clearly very concerned about the end of democracy, potentially. And that was the thing that he was hitting over and over again. Harris has said that, yes, we have to talk about Donald Trump, but there's also this vision for the future that's important. And we think about Walls versus

Vance, just totally different kinds of warriors. Yes, Walls is a progressive who's seen as a strong messenger for the left. Vance is seen as a strong messenger for the right. But the way they go about it is very different. There's a little bit more of an undercurrent of anger in how J.D. Vance views the country and what the country should be. People also don't apparently like J.D. Vance all that much in the last two weeks, given his rollout. There weren't a lot of people who knew who he was when he first was named. Now we have some more data. The NPR PBS News Marist poll shows that 55% of independents have an unfavorable view of J.D. Vance. He's a net negative overall with the country. And the first rule of a vice presidential pick is do no harm, right? And they might not be able

to move a ton of numbers in a positive direction, but they can hurt the ticket in the way people view them. You know, just look at John McCain and Sarah Palin, for example. I'm going to be with Harris tonight in Philly when she announces her new running mate to the world. This is their first joint campaign appearance. And the campaign is expecting thousands of people to show up. You've been seeing these really large mega rallies for Harris. And one big question I've had is how her running mate is able to like independently energize the Democratic base, because we saw that Trump chose somebody who was energizing in theory, the Republican, you know, base and had a really, I would say, warm reception at the Republican convention. But ever since then, J.D. Vance has, I would say, struggled with some of the rhetoric

and the messaging that he's delivered out in the campaign trail. And I'm really interested to see how Tim Walz is able to effectively message for Harris as a surrogate. All right, let's leave it there for today. More coverage on Tim Walz available at NPR.org and always on your local NPR station. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.