Tim Walz’s record as Governor opens line of attack for GOP

The Minnesota Governor’s eagerness to go big is being used by Republicans to bolster their case that he governs from the far left.

Minnesota Governor and vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Picture: AFP

Three days after Democrats narrowly won control of Minnesota’s Senate, House and governor’s mansion in 2022, Governor Tim Walz summoned party leaders to his formal office in the state’s Capitol building for an early morning huddle.

The two top Democrats in the legislature outlined their ideas for passing a major agenda with their new control of power. Their plans included pouring money into education, public works and vastly expanding the state’s social safety net.

“OK, let’s go,” Walz said after hearing them out, according to Kari Dziedzic, who became the state Senate majority leader in 2023 and participated in the meeting. House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who also attended, summed up Walz’s approach: “You win elections for a reason,” she said.

The Minnesota Governor’s eagerness to go big led to more than two dozen major laws being passed in the last year, an agenda that is already being used by Republicans to bolster their case that he governs from the far left.

Despite being a two-term governor with over a decade in congress as a moderate, the progressive record he pursued over roughly five months could undercut the Harris campaign strategy of selecting a folksy, plain-spoken Midwesterner to help her win over more independent voters.

Democrats in Minnesota moved fast in 2023 to tick through their agenda, and many described Walz’s role as guiding a process that state Democrats had worked towards for over a decade. In 2022, Walz won a second term, Democrats held their majority in the state House and narrowly flipped the state Senate. It was the first time since 2014 that they controlled the governor’s office and both legislative chambers, known in politics as a trifecta.

“The session was like running the rapids at great speeds with great concern about not getting wiped out on a rock,” said Larry Jacobs, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

“I would say he was the rudder,” Jacobs said of Walz. “There was a wind behind him.”

Over less than five months, Walz signed into law a suite of liberal priorities, helping propel him to national prominence. So much Democratic orthodoxy was enacted that some local progressive activists openly mused whether they would have any additional work to do in coming legislative sessions.

“If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota,” former president Barack Obama wrote on social media last year as the session was ending.

Walz has called the agenda passed in 2023 “the Minnesota Miracle 2.0,” recycling a phrase used more than five decades ago when politicians created a new way to pay for schools and governments in the state.

Republican criticism of Walz’s record is likely to intensify. “He’s got things done that – he has positions that – are just – it’s not even possible to believe that they exist,” said former president Donald Trump, the Republican standard-bearer.

From January to May 2023, Walz signed legislation to: mandate pricing transparency for prescription drugs; ban so-called forever chemicals; guarantee tuition-free college for students from low-income families, including undocumented migrants; allow undocumented migrants to obtain driver’s licences; provide free breakfast and lunch for K-12 students in public schools; protect broad access to abortions; restore voting rights for criminals; strengthen background checks for gun purchases; allocate funding for affordable housing; create a state-level child tax credit; establish paid family and medical leave; increase state capital-gains taxes on the rich; establish protections for trans patients seeking gender-affirming care and those who deliver it; approve funding to replace lead pipes across the state; provide an additional $US300m for local governments to fund police and public safety; establish a goal to move the state utilities to 100 per cent clean energy by 2040; and legalise recreational marijuana for adults.

The Governor’s allies emphasised that the 2023 legislative session also included items popular on the right, including more funding for police. They also say he has had a long career in public service that included working across the aisle.

“Governor Walz routinely worked with Republicans in congress to pass legislation aimed at helping veterans and farmers, and he struck bipartisan deals with a split legislature in Minnesota to cut taxes and fund schools,” said Teddy Tschann, a spokesman for Walz.

Walz did tap the brakes in a few areas, causing friction within his party. After he used his veto on a measure that added protections for drivers in ride-share programs such as Uber and Lyft, the initiative’s champion, Omar Fateh, wrote on social media: “We saw the power corporations hold on our government.”

Walz also nixed some priorities a nurses union wanted, siding with the Mayo Clinic, a major employer. That prompted the union to station an empty hospital bed outside his office and stage a sit-in.

The Governor wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about legislation to allow undocumented residents access to healthcare, according to a person familiar with his views. But he also decided not to veto it.

Walz’s critics said he had turned Minnesota into something closer to California, a place known for liberal policies.

“Certainly on the policy level, we are following in their footsteps,” said Doug Loon, chief executive of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. “But we are not an economic island like California can be — we are dependent on the rest of the country.” Loon called the 2023 session “very detrimental to the business community.” To longtime allies, Walz’s excitement ahead of the 2023 session was palpable. When he drew up his fiscal plan, the former high-school teacher proposed the largest single-year increase to state aid for Minnesota school districts in two decades. A budget surplus in the state gave Walz added flexibility. Before publicly unveiling his plan, Walz called the head of the state’s largest educators’ union to brief her.

“What I remember is he was so excited and he was talking incredibly fast, ” said Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota. “I couldn’t even break in to say, ‘Wow.’ ” Some Democratic activists praised Walz for showing some ideological flexibility when policy proposals got into the weeds.

“If Gov. Walz was the kind of guy who said: ‘This is what I ran on, and it is my way or the highway,’ we wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much done,” said Kris Fredson, a labor leader in Minnesota who has known Walz for nearly two decades.

Asked how Democratic leaders in Minnesota kept their one-seat majority in line, Dziedzic, who was the Senate Majority leader in 2023, said the Democratic leaders would steer members away from general critiques and instead focus on what specific issues lawmakers could identify with legislation. “With no votes to spare, I made sure that members couldn’t say, ‘Well, I don’t like that bill,’ ” she said. “They had to specifically say what they didn’t like.” When the 2023 session ended, the governor’s staff organised a news conference and went big for their finale, too. They brought in a band. And they hired a company to fly a drone with a camera through the state house and even over parts of the building. Some viewed the splashy recording as a sign Walz was interested in better marketing his accomplishments to the rest of the nation, perhaps with an eye to a cabinet post or national office.

In the video, he neatly summed up his rationale for doing so much so quickly. “It’s not about banking political capital for the next election,” Walz says in a video as the drone zooms near him. “It’s about burning political capital to improve lives.”

The Wall Street Journal