Harris VP pick Tim Walz under microscope for response to 2020 George Floyd protests in Minneapolis

The announcement of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate has shaken up the 2024 presidential race once again, and it’s also turning the clock back to 2020 when the country was riven by protests following the police murder of George Floyd.

Walz was governor when police in his state pinned Floyd to the ground by his neck for more than nine minutes, sparking massive, sometimes violent, protests and looting across the Minneapolis area and the country.

Republicans, predictably, have already seized on this moment in Walz’s history, painting him as another soft-on-crime liberal who lost control of their city.

“They make an interesting tag team, because of course, Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020,” JD Vance, Walz’s rival on the GOP ticket, told Fox News on Tuesday.

Those on the left, meanwhile, found plenty to take issue with as well, criticizing heavy police tactics during the protests.

So, how did Tim Walz respond to Floyd’s death?

The most controversial part of the governor’s response to the tragedy came in the days that followed, as protests escalated into looting and arson in parts of Minneapolis, a conflagration that ultimately destroyed 1,500 businesses and buildings and caused an estimated $500m in damage. Parties still disagree over whether Walz activated the state’s National Guard too late, allowing Minneapolis to suffer.

On Wednesday, May 27, two days after Floyd’s murder, Minneapolis Jacob Frey and then-police chief Medaria Arradondo both reached out to the governor’s office, requesting the Guard deploy in the city to stem the growing chaos.

«We expressed the seriousness of the situation. The urgency was clear,» Frey said the following month, as criticisms mounted of the