What A Day - Tim Walz's Progressive Realism, Explained

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

In front of a crowd of thousands at a rally in Philadelphia this week, Vice President Kamala Harris made her first appearance with her newly-minted running mate: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Aside from popularizing the withering “weird” insult against Republicans, the two-term Midwest governor has a reputation that straddles the moderate/progressive divide within the Democratic Party. During his decade-plus representing a swing district in the House, Walz earned a reputation as a pragmatist who regularly reached across the aisle to pass legislation through Congress. But as governor, he signed a slate of major progressive bills into law, like protecting access to abortion and gender-affirming care, expanding gun control, and guaranteeing paid family leave. To get a better sense of Walz and what we he brings to the ticket, Max and Josie examine Walz’s rise from high school social studies teacher to vice presidential hopeful. They’ll dig deep into four major policies that have helped shape his career as a lawmaker: healthcare, free school lunches, reproductive rights and IVF, and the war in Gaza.

So, Max, I've got a question for you, and I want you to be totally honest with me. Oh, fencing. My favorite Olympic event this year? Definitely fencing. Nope, not that question. This one's about Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential nominee. Here he is giving his nomination acceptance speech on Tuesday. I gotta tell you, pointing out just an observation of mine that I made. I just have to say it. You know it. You feel it. These guys are creepy. And yes, just weird as hell. That's what you see. That's what you see. So, Max, my question for you is, how much did you really know about this guy before Biden dropped out three weeks ago?

Not a lot. I had heard about the Minnesota miracle. Is that like a sports thing? Maybe. I don't know. Probably. But it also refers to this historic wave of progressive legislation that waltz past as governor, despite having a teeny tiny one seat majority in the state legislature. But if I'm honest, I did not know much more than that. Until now. Until now. I'm Josie Duffy Rice, filling in for Aaron Ryan.

And I'm Max Fisher. And this is How We Got Here, a series where we explore a big question behind the week's headlines and tell a story that answers that question. Our question this week, you've seen the memes and the viral videos, but what does Tim Walz's record in office tell us about who he is, what he values, and how he would govern?

We're digging deep into Walz's history, bringing you four stories of policies that he put his shoulder into and that we think, all together, give a reasonably full picture of him. So, Josie, you know I love to give away the ending. All told, how would you sum up how you feel about this guy having now gone through so much of his record?

Look, I'm a huge Minnesota fan. I love the state of Minnesota. I think it's underrated. And I think Tim Walz is great. Mostly everything I've seen about him I really, really like. Yeah, I came away feeling really good about him, I really, really like. Yeah, I came away feeling really good about him, that he's a progressive in his bones and one who wants to get things done, but that he's also a pragmatist more than he is, say, a Bernie Sanders-style fire breather.

Yeah. Okay, so let's get into it. We're going to start at the start with Walz's first run for Congress in 2006. Before then, he'd had a career as a high school teacher, an Army National Guardsman. He ran for a mostly rural and traditionally conservative House district in southern Minnesota. Sounds like a pretty long shot run. Yeah, it was. The district had voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. It had been held by a Republican for 12 years. And it's worth saying that the district flipped back to Republican after Walsh left. So it's not like he got carried into office by some big demographic shift. Here's a radio ad that Walsh ran as part of that 2006 campaign.

Hi, my name is Tim Walsh, and I'm running for Congress here in southern Minnesota for several important reasons. But today I'd like to tell you about one issue that's very personal to me. I am a retired command sergeant major in the Minnesota National Guard, and after years of firing artillery, I sustained severe inner ear damage. Because I have good health insurance provided through my employer, I was able to have surgery on my ear. As my ear healed, my hearing was gradually restored. One morning, several weeks after the surgery, I awoke to a sound I couldn't identify. I asked my wife what I was hearing, and she told me, Tim, that's your four-year-old daughter, Hope. You see, Hope wakes up singing every morning.

But I had never heard that sound until that day. I'm running for Congress because I believe we as a country have a moral obligation to ensure that every father can hear his daughter sing, that every citizen receives the best care our medical community has to offer. I'm Tim Walz, and I approve this message because I've heard how important health care is to everyone. Sorry, I'm a little emotional. Yeah, that was really pulling at the heartstrings. I think it's also interesting how he's positioning himself. He's like advancing a very progressive value here, right? Expanding access to health care. But he's doing it in this way that's both unapologetic, but is also kind of framed for a conservative audience. Right. Yeah. He's not railing at the health insurance companies or big pharma,

and he's emphasizing his status as a veteran and a dad who just wants to hear his daughter. Yeah. How could you disagree with that? I couldn't. And that carries into how he fights for access to health care once he wins that congressional seat. So here's the thing. He did focus on health care, but mostly in the narrow lane of veterans issues. He was on the Veteran Affairs Committee and eventually became its top-ranked Democrat. He used that perch to sponsor a bunch of legislation expanding health care for veterans.

Okay, so give us a few examples. Oh, you know, he had a bill to provide care for veterans who'd been exposed to toxic chemicals. He pushed to expand GI benefits. One of his bigger pieces of legislation provides mental health care for veterans to address suicide prevention. So nothing revolutionary on its own, but it adds up to a decent expansion in veteran health benefits that Walz slowly accumulated over 12 years in Congress. Anyway, Max, it'd be good to know what he did in Congress on the bigger health care issues as well. Like, where did Walz stand during the whole Obamacare fight? I feel like that's a good litmus test, right, for how he's going to do as a progressive. Josie, I'm sure you remember the big intra-left Obamacare fight at the time was whether to include

a quote-unquote public option, meaning a government health plan. Right. Having a public option was the progressive cause. So did Walz side with the progressives or where was he on this? So he hinted at one point that he might back this issue, but ultimately he didn't. And anyway, the public option didn't make it into the bill and Walz voted for the resulting Obamacare. So Max, hearing all of this about Walz's record on health care in Congress, what do we think it says about him? I mean, I think that if you look at just his congressional record in isolation, you would come away thinking that this guy is a moderate, kind of a centrist. I mean, he had really good ratings from the progressive groups, but he also had a really good rating from the NRA. And I think seeing that in full context with the things we are about to discuss about his

record since leaving Congress, my view is maybe not that he is temperamentally a moderate or centrist, but rather that he is kind of a realist and pragmatist who is focused on what he can get done and is not a big vocal fire-breathing populist on issues outside of what he thinks he can get done. Right. It's also kind of interesting to think about him in this context of how is he as a legislator, right? When he has to kind of make deals and try to read the room in a sort of different way and ultimately has a lot less power versus how is he as an executive, right? When he's sort of where the buck stops in some of this legislation. Yeah. Something that I thought was really interesting is that more than half of the bills he co-sponsored between 2015 and 2017 were introduced by non-Democrats.

So, in other words, introduced by Republicans or independents. There's also this group called GovTrack that scores every member of Congress ideologically with a number based on their votes and their legislation. And it actually puts Waltz dead in the middle or pretty close to the middle. And to be clear, I don't mean the middle of the Democratic Party, but I mean the middle of both parties. And that's based on his congressional record. At the same time, he did win reelection five times in a district that is very hard for a Democrat to win and the Democrats have really struggled to win at any level when it's not waltz. So I think it would be fair to look at his congressional record and say, okay, this was not a guy who majorly advanced the progressive agenda, but overall his district and the things that he

worked on were significantly more progressive for him being able to win that seat and win those votes. Right. And some level, this is probably a political consideration. If he wanted to stay in Congress, he couldn't go too far left. Right. So let's move on to Waltz's time as governor, because that is where he became much more politically visible, had a lot more power, and took on the progressive image that he has today. So yeah, let's do it. He ran for governor in 2018.

He won by 11 points, which, as you may imagine, is a lot. That's a lot. He came into office promising a progressive agenda, and that included a big focus on, yes, health care, but also education, which were the two centerpieces of his speech at his 2019 inauguration. So here he is.

Disparities in our educational system based on geography, race, or economic status hold back not only our students, but our entire state from reaching its full potential. That's why we must dedicate ourselves now that we must make at Minnesota the education state for all children, black, white, brown, indigenous. There are so many big progressive policies that Waltz has signed as governor. It's honestly hard to know which one to highlight. But I feel like if we had to pick one that he's most known for, especially what's gotten a lot of attention these past few weeks, right? And that sort of speaks to his focus on education and public health. It's got to be free school lunches. That has gotten a lot of attention. It's pretty cool, too. So before this, Minnesota's public schools, it's got to be free school lunches. That has gotten a lot of attention. It's pretty cool, too.

So before this, Minnesota's public schools, like in almost all states, they charge for breakfast and lunch. And there were programs for income-based reimbursement, but you had to apply for them. It could be onerous. It was not an easy process. And so, in other words, some kids were still going hungry. Before the WALLS program came into effect, an advocacy group estimated that one in six Minnesota school kids experienced some degree of food insecurity. And a quarter of those did not technically qualify for meal reimbursement. Yeah, I can see why WALS didn't feel like that old system was working. Yeah, you don't want school kids just hungry at school?

Not good for them? After a lot of pushing, he got the state legislature to pass what was only the third ever statewide law in the country guaranteeing free breakfast and lunch for all school kids, grades K through 12. Yeah, only California and Maine have this. So it's a really big deal. Here's Wallace at the signing ceremony for the law in 2023. across the spectrum, from health providers to activists to children's advocates to just numerous people who are here who have literally spent decades working on this issue of food insecurity and knowing that there are a lot of pieces to make sure that no one, especially no child, ever goes hungry in Minnesota, a land of bounty, a land of plenty, a land that feeds the world.

We are certainly, and in just a few moments going to guarantee by law, we will feed our children. Minnesota isn't exactly a tiny state. About 6 million people live there, so a program like this is no small thing. It was initially estimated to cost $200 million per year, but ended up running closer to $250 million per year because so many families have embraced it, which of course, Republicans in Minnesota have used to try to paint walls as like an overspender, you know, financially irresponsible. But he kept championing the program and it remains popular in the state. You know, when you hear someone say, we will feed our children, like he just said at the end of his clip, it's like, that feels like something everybody can agree on wanting to do, feed kids.

Yeah, this is part of that Minnesota miracle we referenced at the start of the show. Waltz first came into office with a Republican-controlled state Senate, which limited what he could do. But two years ago, in 2022, Democrats took control of both state legislatures by a single seat, a razor-thin margin, and they just ran with it. It's honestly amazing how much the Democrats in Minnesota have passed. It would be amazing if they had legislative supermajorities, but Democrats in a lot of states do have supermajorities, and yet it's hard to think of a single one with a record like this. So we should go through some of the other big stuff they've passed. Yeah, absolutely. Ready when you are.

Here we go. Codified the other big stuff they've passed. Yeah, absolutely. Ready when you are. Here we go. Codified abortion rights. Legalized recreational marijuana. Free college for families making less than $80,000 per year. Paid family leave. Protections for access to gender-affirming care. A refuge program ensuring people who'd been denied gender-affirming care in other states could get it in Minnesota. Background checks for private gun sales.

Voting rights for 55,000 formerly incarcerated people. And a whole bunch of workplace and labor union protections. Wallace framed all of these measures as fitting together into a larger whole. He said, quote, a lot of folks at the beginning were very skeptical that we could get the big, bold vision of transforming Minnesota. This got a lot of national notice. Former President Obama tweeted, quote, if you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what's happening in Minnesota. Anyway, Josie, what do you think this tells us about Waltz and his politics and his values? It's great to see, and we've sort of seen it this week too, right? The left and Democrats more generally being bold on policy to have a majority and have the governor and Democrats more generally being bold on policy, to have a majority and have the governor

and actually pass the big laws, do the big things. It's something that, like we said earlier, doesn't happen very often, right? Something that I thought was really striking was how much he focused on framing progressive values around lifting up everybody in the state, around things that would benefit people, and around framing them less as about promoting values for their own sake and more as about promoting the welfare and well-being of all people regardless of who they are in Minnesota. He has this line that I really like where he's talking about the economy. And he says, the economy is not a jungle, it's a garden. And what that means is that he is saying that rather than the economy being this place where people go for, you know, all versus all, zero-sum competition, it is a place where we can all work together to cultivate it for our mutual benefit.

And when you hear him talking about these policies, it is this kind of interesting needle that he's threading where he's extremely unapologetic about it. He's not trying to beat the democratic socialist allegations. He's not trying to downplay the scale of what he's doing. But at the same time, he's always bringing it back to, you know, like in the school lunches, when people say like, oh, that's socialist. He's like, whatever.

I don't care if you think it's socialist. I just want to feed kids. And I think that focus on the like pragmatic, simultaneously the pragmatic effect of it while doing it in this sweeping progressive way is, I don't know, it's cool. Right. And it's also this kind of frame of investment, right? Like when we spend $250 million feeding kids, we are setting our state up in the long term for better economic health,

better growth, better, you know, the idea that like the savings you make from not feeding kids is going to outweigh the costs of not feeding them long term is just something we all know not to be true, right? And he's kind of pushing back on this idea that inevitably spending money is harmful in the long run. He's basically saying, let's spend to make sure that the state is in a healthier place so that long term we benefit from it. contentious or that Republicans will seize on like gender affirming care is one where you see Democrats saying like, look, I believe in it, but I don't want to push my values or live my values there because I'm worried it would be controversial and that will make it harder for me to achieve other things. And he has figured out a way to square the circle and to kind of do all of it. And it seems like it has only made him more popular

within the state. I mean, there's clearly also some personal values at play here. He, you know, very famously when he was a high school teacher back in the 90s, he was the faculty advisor for his school's gay straight alliance, which, you know, in the 90s was no small thing. Yeah, it was a big deal. And to your point, it sort of gets back to what he said, right? Which is like, people should have the freedom to live the lives they want to live. Yeah. At least to a certain point. And he's trying to protect that. so josie we should talk about waltz's support for an issue that has suddenly become much more relevant as republicans now went to ban it as part of the christian nationalist project 2025 agenda and that is ivf it remains so wild to me that IVF is actually like on the chopping block next after abortion.

Waltz and his wife Gwen conceived both of their kids through in vitro fertilization, and he's been outspoken about his family's journey through that process, which took seven years, and about the need to protect access to fertility services. A couple of weeks ago, after former President Donald Trump announced Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, Walt Wallace wrote on Twitter, quote, even if you've never gone through

the hell of infertility, someone you know has. When Gwen and I were having trouble getting pregnant, the anxiety and frustration blotted out the sun. J.D. Vance opposing the miracle of IVF is a direct attack on my family and so many others. He raised this at his speech on Tuesday when he got announced as the VP candidate. Here's what he said in the lead up to recounting the story about his family using IVF, which I think is actually the more telling part of how he talks about this.

Some of us in here are old enough to remember. I see you down there. I see those old white guys. Some of us are old enough to remember when it was Republicans who were talking about freedom. It turns out now what they meant was the government should be free to invade your doctor's office. In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make. Even if we wouldn't make the same choice for ourselves, there's a golden rule.

Mind your own damn business. Waltz has been talking about this a lot recently. As it happens, one of his best interviews on the subject, in my view, was recorded right across the hall for Pod Save America about a week and a half ago. Here's Waltz after Pod Save America's John Lovett asked him how he would respond to accusations from J.D. Vance that Democrats aren't quote unquote pro-family. What do you say to him? Yeah, first of all, it was up to him. I wouldn't have a family because of IVF and the things that we need to do reproductive. My kids were born through that direct, you know, that way.

And also, I make sure that I'm the guys and our folks are investing in prenatal care. We're the ones that are there for universal pre-K. We're the ones that are providing school meals at this. I'm not going to back down one bit on this whole family values thing. And it's us that that construct that he's putting out there is absolutely untrue. We're making it more affordable to have children by having paid family medical leave so that you can go home when your kids are sick and take care of them. Or if you're a dad, I don't have to go right back to work five days later after my wife had a C-section because our insurance wouldn't pay for it. We're boosting those things up. So Max, I know we wanted to talk today about Tim Walz's policy record,

but this issue, access to IVF, is kind of an interesting one, right? Because it's very personal for him. And it's clearly something that he intends to talk about a lot in the campaign. But it's not really a policy issue that he's faced as governor or in Congress. And at the same time, you can hear him tying it to policy issues that he has dealt with substantively, right? Like, he is making a broader argument about family and freedom. So when you hear him on this, what do you think it tells us about him or his vision for a Harris-Balls administration? So look, I mean, you kind of hinted at this, but I think probably some of this is just about positioning for the campaign and trying to lean into the idea that the Trump campaign is extreme and what they want is really against what most Americans want and it's really unreasonable.

I do think that it does tie to the rest of his policy agenda. And you kind of referenced this where it's a kind of freedom agenda of like he's talked about paid family leave, not as a like, you know, socialist welfare benefit, but rather as something that provides people freedom. Because that way, if, you know, your kid is sick and you need to stay home, you can do that. And if you have something come up, you have the flexibility and the freedom to kind of both take care of your family and to do your job. And I do think that that is sincere. And I think that that is part of how he has managed to thread this needle throughout these very different looking parts of his career as both someone who is very progressive, but is also a super duper pragmatist is I think that he himself thinks about these progressive issues pragmatically. And I think he thinks about them as just like, what do I think is reasonable? What do I think

is kind of the right thing for people to do rather than as a kind of like big ideological project? Right. And not getting so caught up in kind of the rhetoric, right? It's sort of like, there's a weird almost trust he has in the average person, the average voter, to see the connection between, yes, we're investing in families and we are the real family party versus like we want to mandate you have children. Or it makes sense, right? B follows from A, and he does a very good job of setting that up in a way that I don't think the party has always done well. Yeah, I agree with that. So one last issue from Walsh's record that we should talk about, Max, and it's an issue that I know we care about on this show, which is the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Yeah, needless to say, the governor of Minnesota is not traditionally considered to be a major player in Middle Eastern armed conflicts. Yeah, surprisingly. But like everyone else in American politics, Walsh has weighed in, and that's given us some hints on to how he might lend his voice in any relevant policy discussions within a Kamala Harris White House. Walz talked to Minnesota Public Radio back in March about the ongoing Israeli war in Gaza.

Here's what he said when the interviewer asked him about what he would say to people who had voted uncommitted in the 2024 Democratic primary as a way to protest the Biden administration's support for Israel in that war. The Listen to Minnesota campaign, which quickly mobilized ahead of the primary, noted that the strongest support for uncommitted came in areas with pretty big young voter turnout. How does the president and surrogates like yourself mend fences with those younger voters? Yeah, well, we highlight the other things we're doing, whether it's around climate change, reproductive rights, equity, inclusion, things like that. And then we get out and say this to them and understand, look, I've been engaged with this issue for decades.

It's things I've done. I've been in Gaza. I've been in the West Bank. I've been an open critic of the Netanyahu administration and the advancements of settlements. But also it is unacceptable that we have hostages in this. We need a lasting ceasefire and a two-state solution. And you need to go talk to them, hear them what they're saying, hear and let it be engaged. This is democracy working right. I would not want to be part of a party that follows whether it's a lie about the 2020 election or just blindly adheres to that. They are challenging on an issue that should be challenged on.

Some interesting needles he's threading there. Yeah. And it is interesting to not immediately kind of reject this idea. challenging on an issue that should be challenged on. Some interesting needles he's threading there. Yeah. And it is interesting to not immediately kind of reject this idea that pushing back is necessarily bad. He's called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for expanding aid delivery there. But other than that, he hasn't really left us a ton of tea leaves we can read on his thinking on the conflict. When he was in Congress, he expressed support for Israel in line with most Democrats, but he was never what you would call loudly pro-Israel. And like most Democrats, he voted in 2015 in support of the Iran nuclear deal, which pro-Israel groups had opposed.

He is close with fellow Minnesotan and Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. She is one of Congress's more vocal critics of Israel. That doesn't mean they agree, of course, but suffice it to say that he is not one of the pro-Israel Democrats who's distanced themselves from Omar or whom Omar has criticized. And honestly, he said, right, that he's concerned about what's happening in Gaza, that he thinks it makes sense to be concerned. He's spoken out about at least some criticism of Israel's military approach in the region. Yeah, I think what we can say is that he is not among the proudly pro-Israel faction of his party, but he hasn't been particularly outspoken as a critic of Israel either. This issue is going to be such an important one facing the Harris-Walls administration,

right, if they win in November, and honestly during the election too. So do you think that we can really conclude anything about his views here? I mean, I think, honestly, that the little information he has given us about what he thinks substantively about the foreign policy are just pretty in line with standard Democrat. And he doesn't seem like he is particularly eager to go out on a limb on either direction. I will say I am more struck by the way he has approached the kind of domestic politics of it and the way that he expressed sympathy for uncommitted voters. It does seem like he maybe doesn't want to get into much of the foreign policy of it all, but he does want to make sure that he is giving space for young people, students, people who are critical of U.S. support for Israel and to signal that he at least is listening to them. Yeah, absolutely. The rest of his foreign

policy views are also not super demonstrative. He opposed the Iraq war in his 2006 run, although that was like the prevailing democratic opinion at the time. So that's not super noteworthy. He also claims to be able to speak Mandarin, which I don't know how true that is, but it's kind of a cool fact. Yeah, that is very cool. I can't speak Mandarin. So, you know, he's got that up on me. He does have that on you. Yeah. All right, Josie. Well, we've spent a lot of time walking through Tim Walz's record here today, his veterans health programs in Congress, the raft of progressive reforms he passed as governor last year, what he's talking about now on the campaign trail. All in all, what is your impression of this guy beyond his jokes and viral moments? What do you think about how he would actually govern? You know, he seems most of what I've seen has

indicated that he is proudly progressive in a way that he's not apologetically progressive, right? And we've seen on the right, a sort of proudly right, proudly Republican, proudly conservative thread. And I think there's been a lot of kind of apology almost on the left sometimes. And he's not engaging with that. And I think it gives me a lot of hope, right? Because we need bold solutions. We need bold options, right? We don't need someone to come in and be willing to just walk the line as closely as possible, means test everything, message test

everything. We need someone who can see the problem and identify it. And it seems like he has that skill set. What do you think? I mean, there's been such a kind of ideological and factional divide in the Democratic Party over the last 10 years between, you know, left, liberal, moderates, progressives, whatever you want to call it. And I do like that he is, rather than kind of championing one side against the other, he seems to be taking an approach of rising above it by just not framing things in ideological or factional terms and just praising it in terms of like common sense, pragmatic, realistic, let's help people, while at the same

time substantively pursuing policies, at least so far based on his short but incredibly accomplished record as governor that lean like pretty solidly progressive. So I don't know, seems pretty sick. Yeah, I mean, so far, so good, you know? Well, let's go out with the audio from Waltz signing that free school meals bill last year. And to set the scene, he's surrounded by a few dozen extremely cute kids and explaining what a bill signing is. It's very sweet. Will you explain how you're going to sign it? That's what I'm doing.

Okay. Can you tell she's a teacher? Yeah. How We Got Here is written and hosted by me, Max Fisher, and by Erin Ryan. It's produced by Emma Illick-Frank. Evan Sutton mixes and edits the show. Jordan Cantor sound engineers the show. And a special thank you to Whataday's talented hosts, Travelle Anderson, Priyanka Arabindi, Josie Duffy Rice,

and Juanita Tolliver for welcoming us to the family.