WASHINGTON, D.C. — Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate on Tuesday, according to three people familiar with her decision, after a breakneck selection process that began barely two weeks ago when she suddenly became the likely nominee.
Harris’ campaign made the announcement before an evening rally in Philadelphia.
The decision marks another major milestone in the short period since the vice president moved to take over the top of the Democratic ticket following Joe Biden’s July 21 decision to step aside. She has been scrambling to build out a campaign since then and breathe new life into the Democratic race against Republican Donald Trump. She clinched the nomination formally on Monday night.
In choosing the 60-year-old Walz, she is turning to a Midwestern governor, military veteran and union supporter who helped enact an ambitious Democratic agenda for his state, including sweeping protections for abortion rights and generous aid to families.
Harris hopes to shore up her campaign’s standing across the upper Midwest, a critical region in presidential politics that often serves as a buffer for Democrats seeking the White House. The party remains haunted by Trump’s wins in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016. Trump lost those states in 2020 but has zeroed in on them as he aims to return to the presidency this year and is expanding his focus to Minnesota.
After Tuesday’s trip to Pennsylvania, they will spend the next five days flying thousands of miles around the country touring critical battleground states. They’ll visit Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Detroit on Wednesday and Phoenix and Las Vegas later in the week.
Planned stops in Savannah, Georgia, and Raleigh were postponed because of Tropical Storm Debby’s effects, and rain associated with it could also upend a scheduled stop in Durham.
Walz is joining Harris during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American politics, promising an unpredictable campaign ahead. Republicans have rallied around Trump after his attempted assassination in July. Just weeks later, President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, forcing Harris to unify Democrats and consider potential running mates during an exceedingly compressed time frame.
A team of lawyers and political operatives led by former Attorney General Eric Holder pored over documents and conducted interviews with potential selections. And Harris herself met with her three finalists on Sunday. She mulled the decision over on Monday with top aides at the vice president’s residence in Washington, D.C., and finalized Tuesday morning.
Harris, the first black woman and person of South Asian descent to lead a major party ticket, initially considered nearly a dozen candidates — including North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who bowed out of consideration last week — before zeroing in on a handful of serious contenders, all of whom were white men. In landing on Walz, she sided with a low-key partner who has proven himself as a champion for Democratic causes.
Walz has been a strong public advocate for Harris in her campaign against Trump and Vance, labeling the Republicans “just weird” in an interview last month. Democrats have seized on the message and amplified it since then.
During a fundraiser for Harris on Monday in Minneapolis, Walz said: “It wasn’t a slur to call these guys weird. It was an observation.”
Walz, who grew up in the small town of West Point, Nebraska, was a social studies teacher, football coach and union member at Mankato West High School in Minnesota before he got into politics.
He won the first of six terms in Congress in 2006 from a mostly rural southern Minnesota district and used the office to champion veterans issues. Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, rising to command sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks in the military.
He ran for governor in 2018 on the theme of “One Minnesota,” winning by more than 11 points, and won reelection in 2022 by 8 points.
Walz has served often as a Biden-Harris surrogate and has made increasingly frequent appearances on national television. They’ve included an interview on Fox News that irritated Trump so much that he posted on Truth Social, “They make me fight battles I shouldn’t have to fight.” Walz is also co-chair of the rules committee for the Democratic National Convention. And he led a White House meeting of Democratic governors with Biden following the president’s disastrous performance in his debate with Trump.
Putting Walz on the ticket could help Democrats hold the state’s 10 electoral votes and bolster the party more broadly in the Midwest. No Republican has won a statewide race in Minnesota since Tim Pawlenty was re-elected governor in 2006, but GOP candidates for attorney general and state auditor came close in 2022.
Trump finished just 1.5 percentage points behind Democrat Hillary Clinton in the state in 2016. While Biden carried Minnesota by more than 7 points in 2020, Trump has taken to falsely claiming that he won the state last time and can do it again.
Minnesota has produced two vice presidents, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.