Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, on Tuesday named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate as she faces off against former President Trump in the 2024 election, according to the Associated Press.
The naming of the 60-year-old Walz was not a shocker, as his name was instantly thought to be in contention in the two weeks since Harris succeeded President Biden as the party's standard-bearer.
The 60-year-old Walz, a former congressman, is in his second term as governor of Minnesota, a state that Democrats have reliably won in presidential elections for decades but that the Trump campaign has aimed at flipping this cycle.
Having the plainspoken Walz on the national ticket not only helps Harris in Minnesota, it also benefits the vice president in the two neighboring Midwestern battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan.
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Walz, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, may also help Harris when it comes to bringing in campaign cash, as he has helped steer the DGA to record-breaking fundraising this year.
The governor will also be able to showcase a slew of progressive policy victories in Minnesota, including protecting abortion rights, legalizing recreational marijuana and restricting gun access to curb shootings.
Raised in rural Nebraska, Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard in 1981, soon after graduating from high school.
Walz returned to Nebraska to attend Chadron State College, where he graduated in 1989 with a degree in social science education.
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He taught English and American History in China for one year through a program at Harvard University before being hired in 1990 as a high school teacher and football and basketball coach in Nebraska. Six years later, he moved to Mankato, Minnesota, to teach geography at Mankato West High.
Waltz was deployed to Italy to support Operation Enduring Freedom in 2003 before retiring two years later from the National Guard at the rank of command sergeant major.
He was elected to the House in 2006 and re-elected five times, representing Minnesota's 1st Congressional District, a mostly rural district covering the southern part of the state that includes a number of midsize cities. During his last two years on Capitol Hill, he served as ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Walz won election as governor in 2018 and re-election four years later.
The naming of Walz comes after the Democratic National Committee held a virtual roll call and formally nominated Harris as the party's presidential nominee.
The DNC announced on Friday that Harris had officially clinched the 2024 presidential nomination, after winning the votes of a majority of pledged delegates to the Democrats' upcoming national convention.
The DNC's electronic voting for their party's 2024 standard-bearer kicked off less than two weeks after Biden, in a blockbuster announcement, ended his re-election campaign and endorsed his vice president to succeed him at the top of the ticket.
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Biden's disastrous performance against Trump at a late June debate that was held in Atlanta fueled questions about his physical and mental abilities to serve another four years in the White House.
It also spurred a rising chorus of calls from within his own party for the 81-year-old president to end his bid for a second term in the White House.
Biden's immediate backing of Harris ignited a surge of endorsements for the vice president by Democratic governors, senators, House members and other party leaders and elders. Within 36 hours, Harris announced that she had locked up her party's nomination by landing the verbal backing of a majority of the nearly 4,700 convention delegates.
Harris is expected to be formally announced as the party's nominee after the virtual roll call ends at 6 p.m. on Monday.
The vice president, according to DNC rules, will then be allowed to enter her running mate's name for nomination. According to the DNC, the convention chair would then declare that candidate to be the party's vice presidential nominee.
Harris and Walz are scheduled to kick off a campaign swing through all seven crucial battleground states starting on Tuesday, with an event in Philadelphia.
