Tim Walz is clearly a midwest ‘man’s man’. But he’s the antidote to toxic MAGA masculinity

There’s no way to argue that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz isn’t a man’s man.

The 60-year-old teacher-turned-politician, who Vice President Kamala Harris tapped as her running mate less than three weeks ago, exudes a certain rural sensibility that pervades midwestern states.

He served nearly a quarter-century in the National Guard, is a gun owner who won a congressional marksmanship contest, and is an avid hunter.

He’s also a man who spent years coaching high school football, that most American of pastimes that whole generations of men across the country have cited as a formative experience in their lives. It’s so central to the cultural zeitgeist that entire films and TV shows have been built around telling the stories of high school football teams.

The image of a high school football coach is often one of a whistle-clutching neanderthal, too busy focusing on winning to touch anything “politically correct.”

But Walz and the Harris campaign are making a point of highlighting the ways that the Minnesota governor has sought to break that cultural mold – like when the then-football coach took the initiative to sponsor a gay-straight alliance at the school where he worked.

One of his former students, Seth Elliot Meyer, told The Independent that his initial impression of Walz as a paragon of traditional masculinity was simply dead wrong.

“I sort of naively believed that someone who was a big, masculine dude with a deep voice was never someone who’s going to be on my side,” he said.

Instead, he recalled how Walz “was totally fine being a dude who would say, ‘Why the hell aren’t we all treated equal?’” 

Before the former teacher delivered the closing keynote on the third night of the Democratic convention on Wednesday, he was