Tim Walz’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Life

Tim Walz never attended an Ivy League school. He never wrote a political memoir. He once worked at a tanning bed factory in Jonesboro, Ark. And until he was 40, he never showed much interest in a career in politics.

Mr. Walz, the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota chosen by Vice President Kamala Harris as her running mate on Tuesday, had not devoted his life to reaching this pinnacle.

In selecting Mr. Walz, Ms. Harris has picked a one-man rejoinder to the idea that the Democrats are the party of the cultural and coastal elite. His biography and his style are a sharp contrast not only to Ms. Harris, who is from California, but also to former President Donald J. Trump, a New York billionaire, and to some degree to Mr. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who graduated from Yale Law School (and wrote a best-selling memoir).

Mr. Walz has led a life that stands out in the top echelon of American politics: a tableau filled with scenes of farming, turkey hunting, weekends of National Guard duty, public schools and coaching the local high school football team to a state championship.

Since turning to politics, Mr. Walz has used this biography to his political advantage and it was no small part of what drew Ms. Harris to Mr. Walz, who until weeks ago was virtually unknown to most Democrats. With his broad smile and unpolished style, it was the Minnesota governor — more than any other Democrat — who was able to conceive and deliver Democrats’ new favorite attack on Mr. Trump and his party: that they are “creepy” and “weird as hell.”

For all his affability, Mr. Walz has displayed, at times, shrewd political instincts. His positions have evolved as his ambitions have broadened. He has capitalized on key moments. After the Democrats won control