Vice President Kamala Harris has picked Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to be her running mate, fewer than 100 days before the 2024 election and four years to the week that President Joe Biden tapped her to become his No. 2.
“I am proud to announce that I’ve asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate,” Harris wrote on social media on Tuesday. “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his. It’s great to have him on the team.”
In his own social media post, Walz described his promotion as “the honor of a lifetime,” adding he is “all in.”
“Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible,” he wrote. “It reminds me a bit of the first day of school. So, let’s get this done, folks!”
Harris’s decision caps a truncated vetting process after Democrats quickly coalesced around Harris as their replacement nominee last month following Biden suspending his reelection campaign in response to party pressure to step aside over concerns about his age, mental acuity, and electoral prospects against former President Donald Trump.
Harris’s choice sets a tone for her campaign and possible administration.
Almost a dozen vice presidential candidates were reportedly vetted by former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and one-time Biden White House counsel Dana Remus, but the top three contenders became Walz, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) after Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC) withdrew his name from consideration. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, as well as Govs. Andy Beshear (D-KY) and J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), were also said to be interviewed by Harris’s vetting team and the vice president herself.
Harris’s decision was reportedly predicated on whether the presumptive vice presidential nominee could help her win before helping her govern, with the desire to avoid negative press like that generated by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) for the Trump campaign over his “childless cat ladies” comments. Harris’s husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, and brother-in-law Tony West, who was a deputy of Holder’s at the Obama Justice Department, were trusted advisers throughout, as were former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, before she phoned Walz with the news on Tuesday morning.
“Kamala Harris has made a great decision in choosing Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate,” Biden wrote on Tuesday. “I’ve known Tim Walz for nearly two decades, first during his time in Congress and as governor. A husband and father, he’s been a school teacher and a high school football coach. He served for 24 years in the Army National Guard and became the highest ranking enlisted soldier to ever serve in Congress. As governor, he’s been a strong, principled, and effective leader.”
“As governor, Tim helped families and businesses recover from the pandemic, established paid family leave, guaranteed the right to an abortion, and put common sense gun safety measures in place to keep communities safe,” Obama added. “But Tim’s signature is his ability to talk like a human being and treat everyone with decency and respect — not all that surprising considering the fact that he served in the National Guard for 24 years and worked as a high school social studies teacher and football coach before being elected to Congress.”
Those supporting Shapiro, 51, who became Pennsylvania‘s governor in 2023 after being the commonwealth’s attorney general since 2017, contended he could have helped Harris win the Keystone State, whose 19 Electoral College votes will likely decide the election. Harris could win Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin but would still not have the 270 electoral votes required for the presidency.
Shapiro, who is Jewish, encountered a “No Genocide Josh” protest to his vice presidential candidacy despite having similar policy positions regarding the Israel–Hamas war as the other contenders. He was additionally criticized for his lack of leadership after a 2018 sexual harassment complaint was leveled against a former aide. The staffer remained on Shapiro’s payroll until last September when he resigned after the matter was settled.
“My work here in Pennsylvania is far from finished — there is a lot more stuff I want to get done for our Commonwealth,” Shapiro wrote on Tuesday. “Over the next 90 days, I look forward to traveling all across the Commonwealth to unite Pennsylvanians behind my friends Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and defeat Donald Trump.”
Similarly to Shapiro, proponents of Kelly, 60, a former astronaut and Navy captain who was first elected to Congress in 2020, argued he could have helped Harris put Arizona back in play after Biden’s slippage with minority voters and on issues, including the economy and the border, in the Grand Canyon State. Kelly’s wife, ex-Rep. Gabby Giffords, almost died in a shooting during a constituent event in 2011, with the couple founding the gun control advocacy and research organization Giffords in the aftermath. Kelly came under scrutiny for Chinese venture capital investment in the spy balloon company he started and his delay in endorsing the pro-labor union PRO Act.
“Vice President @KamalaHarris and Governor @Tim_Walz are going to move us forward,” Kelly wrote on Tuesday. “They’re already building a campaign to unite our country — and @GabbyGiffords and I are ready to do everything we can to help them win.”
Walz, 60, a former Army National Guardsman, social studies teacher, and football coach before he ran for the House of Representatives in 2006, was thought to bring executive experience rather than a battleground state, having been Minnesota‘s governor since 2018. Folksy Midwestern Walz, who was favored by Biden, House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, was behind the Harris campaign beginning to undermine Trump and Vance as “weird,” with comparisons drawn between him and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton‘s running mate.
“From providing free meals for school kids to implementing paid family leave in Minnesota, he’s about doing good in all the ways you can,” Clinton wrote on Tuesday. “He’ll be an incredible partner to our first woman president.”
Harris and Walz will now embark on a four-day, five-state battleground tour, with a rally organized in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, to introduce themselves to the public and underscore what is at stake this election. He already has a Harris campaign chief of staff in Liz Allen, who was most recently the State Department‘s assistant secretary for global public affairs.
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“In addition to holding rallies in each location along the tour, at venues ranging from big arenas to college campuses, including HBCUs, the vice president and her running mate will also take the time to meet with voters in smaller, more intimate settings, including union halls, family-owned restaurants, campaign field offices, and more,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt wrote in a statement. “These stops will highlight the ticket’s strength in the blue wall and Sunbelt, from urban areas to rural communities. At each stop, our new ticket will be joined by local elected officials, union members, faith leaders, and more.”
Harris announced Walz before an Aug. 7 deadline, two weeks ahead of this cycle’s Democratic National Convention, after a political fight with Ohio‘s Republican-controlled legislature over the Buckeye State’s ballot access laws. Although Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) signed legislation extending the state’s deadline so Biden and then Harris could appear on its ballots, Democrats were adamant Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Trump ally, could cause problems and held a virtual roll call vote instead during the last week.
