Who Is Tim Walz? 6 Things To Know About Kamala Harris’ Running Mate

It’s official. Vice President Kamala Harris has announced that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) will be her running mate in her bid for the White House.

If you’re feverishly Googling Walz’s name to figure out who he is and why he’s already earning near-universal praise from Democrats, here are six key things to know about him to save yourself some time.

1. Walz has been the Minnesota governor since 2018.

Last year, after Democrats won a legislative “trifecta” in Minnesota, Walz signed a generation’s worth of liberal reforms into law in just four months, making his state a national leader in progressive policymaking.

Some of those new laws require Minnesota to offer 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, to provide free breakfast and lunch for all public school students, to restore voting rights to tens of thousands of formerly incarcerated people, to protect abortion rights and trans kids’ rights, and to move to 100% carbon-free energy by 2040.

2. Walz grew up in Nebraska and worked on a farm.

As a kid, he worked on his family’s farm in Nebraska and joined the National Guard as a teenager to help pay for college. After graduating with a teaching degree, Walz taught in China for a year and then in Nebraska before moving to Minnesota in 1996.

He spent years as a social studies teacher and football coach in the Mankato school district in southern Minnesota before launching his bid for Congress in 2006. Walz, who is pretty bald, recently jokingly attributed his hair loss to spending 20 years supervising a school lunchroom.

“You do not leave that job with a full head of hair,” he wrote on social media . “Trust me.”

3. Walz was a congressman for 12 years.

He represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District from