Election Countdown, 99 Days to Go: Who Is Tim Walz?

A governor, a six-term Congressman, a National Guard artillery specialist, a school teacher for 20 years—and a geographer. A speech that will introduce you to him, and that contains surprises.

Governor Tim Walz, of Minnesota, speaking two weeks ago at the geography-oriented Esri User Conference in San Diego. That was before anyone was talking about Walz as a vice-presidential possibility, since Joe Biden was still in the race. Now that Walz is being “mentioned,” the speech is an illuminating look at his style, background, and beliefs. (Screenshot from Esri video, which is embedded below.)

Who should be Kamala Harris’s running mate? I have no idea. Historically there is only slim evidence that the VP choice really “matters” in electoral terms—despite the news countdowns at convention time, despite the guesses about swing-state influence, despite the many ideas about crafting a “balanced” ticket.

Once the election is over and the team is in office, the character, experience, and views of vice presidents have of course mattered tremendously. Dick Cheney mattered in pushing George W. Bush toward disaster in Iraq. Mike Pence appears to have mattered in pushing the country away from disaster on January 6. Kamala Harris has mattered as being in place and ready when Joe Biden faltered. And vice presidents who were suddenly elevated, like Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson, have been hugely consequential—as was Andrew Johnson, in a bad way.

But what about Kamala Harris’s choice now? The most important reality is that she has a lot of good options. The other important reality is that, based on the track record, her decision should probably not come down to the guesstimate-science of swing-state or interest-group calculations. Rather it probably will, and should, turn on simple feel. With which person will she feel most in sync, as they present the Democrats’ case through these next three-plus months? Which one can she imagine happily carrying out the fully involved, but clearly deferential, duties of a second-in-command? Like Joe Biden before her, she knows a lot about how to judge this latter point.

For most of the people on the “finalist” lists, I know only what I’ve read or seen on TV. But the one who’s probably least-known overall happens to be one I’ve spent time with, on several occasions. That is governor Tim Walz, of Minnesota.

The purpose of this post is not to tout him above other possibilities, though I would be very happy with him as the choice. Instead it’s to point readers to a sample of Walz’s style that is longer and more informative than his recent sound-bite cameos on TV. It also highlights an aspect of Walz’s varied career that has so far has escaped general notice.

That aspect is his self-image as geography teacher and geography buff, and the difference that has made in his approach to governance.

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A rural-origin story, minus the bitterness.

Walz, who is only six months older than Kamala Harris, is known for looking as if he could be an uncle. (He turned 60 this spring; she will in the fall.) He’s a familiar name in Minnesota, where he served six terms as a Congressman and won easy re-election to a second term as governor in 2022. But he’s suddenly come onto the national-politics screen just over the past week, with his freewheeling, humorous, upbeat, “prairie populist” style of presenting the Democrats’ arguments. It’s worth stopping to remember that this has all happened in the past week—because it has only been eight days since Joe Biden announced that he would step aside. Walz appears to have been the first prominent person to start saying of Trump and his ilk, “they’re just weird.”

Walz grew up in a tiny farming town in Nebraska. “Twenty-four kids in my graduating class, and 12 of them were cousins,” he said in the speech you’ll see below. It’s a line he uses frequently in his stump speeches, but it’s a good one that usually gets a laugh. In the summers he worked on a cattle ranch. Just days after he turned 17, his father took him to the recruiting office, where he signed up for the Army National Guard. Walz served with the Guard, as an artillery specialist, for the next 24 years, including postings around the U.S. and in Europe. He reached the rank of command sergeant major.

Meanwhile at age 25, with GI Bill benefits, he finished college and later got a master’s degree. His first teaching job was to fourth graders on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Then he was part of the first group of American teachers authorized to teach high school in China. He returned to the Midwest as a public-school geography teacher and football coach. He taught at various levels for nearly 20 years. On the stage, as you’ll see in the video, Walz moves around constantly and has the air of someone who has learned how to work to hold even teenaged listeners’ attention.

In his early 40s, he ran for Congress and won the first of six terms from Minnesota’s First District, on the state’s southern border with Iowa. He ran for governor six years ago, won with a ten-point margin, and was re-elected with an eight-point margin two years ago.

It’s a varied resume. But let’s get back to the geography-teacher part.

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‘My fellow geographers…’

Talented politicians know how to use different parts of their experiences to bond with different audiences. Long ago, I heard Jimmy Carter talk to crowds about how great it was to be with his fellow Navy veterans—or his fellow farmers, or his fellow Southerners, or his fellow Sunday School teachers, or his fellow Allman Brothers (or Dylan Thomas) fans. You get the idea.

Probably I was seeing something like that when Governor Walz addressed an eager, international crowd of more than 20,000 geography buffs, at a major gathering in San Diego and played directly to their interests. But he added enough details and specifics for the connection to seem real.

The gathering was the annual User Conference of Esri, the company that has done so much to make Geographic Information Systems—known as GIS—part of the essential operating infrastructure for countless governments, companies, non-profit organizations, research institutions, schools, and so on around the world. I’ve written about Esri before and will no doubt do so again. It fits what is my main reporting impulse, which boils down to telling people: Here’s something you haven’t heard about, which is really interesting and is shaping your life in important ways.¹

Walz has been to this event before. At this year’s conference, just two weeks ago today, he was doing a main-stage “plenary” presentation to the capacity crowd at the San Diego convention center. Esri’s User Conference is a strictly apolitical and nonpartisan gathering, but with a longstanding emphasis on sustainability, climate, and science-guided policies.

As you watch this speech, it’s worth noting its place on the timeline of recent history. When Walz gave it, no one was talking about him as a VP possibility. That is because Joe Biden was still in the race, and for better or worse most Democrats assumed that he and Kamala Harris would be their ticket in the fall. Also, Walz’s speech came barely 48 hours after the would-be assassin tried to shoot Donald Trump, in Pennsylvania.

It was a touchy moment for a Democratic governor to be speaking to a big crowd. (Walz is also chair of the Democratic Governors Association.) So his speech steered clear of talking about Democrats or Republicans at all. It was about Minnesota, and America, and the world, and about the role of these geographers’ skills in addressing shared human problems.

Enough set-up. Here is the speech itself, in a YouTube version provided courtesy of Esri. You’ll quickly get the idea of Walz’s themes and styles, and the more you watch the more you’ll notice the connecting themes. (Plus the obvious stump-speech jokes and riffs, but riffs are what stump speeches are for.) I have a viewer’s guide after the video. I think it is worth watching.

In the first few seconds, you’ll see Walz introduced by Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri (and author of a new book, The Power of Where, about the GIS revolution) and Brian Cross, head of Esri’s professional services. Then Walz takes over, with three main sections of the speech:

First of course is his origin story — small-town Nebraska, to the military, to China, to the US Capitol, to the Minnesota statehouse. You’ll notice that just a few minutes in, after telling about his discovery of old copies of National Geographic in the bunkhouse on the cattle ranch, Walz introduces the through-line of geographical awareness as his guiding idea.

Then, second, starting around time 11:00, is the story of how, exactly, modern mapping has made a difference in his time as governor. I think anyone who cares about the mechanics of governance will find this part absorbing. (Side note: Two governors who made it big in national politics, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, based their early stump speeches on how state government actually works. Governors have to make things run.) You’ll hear him explain that over a wide range of issues, from tracking Covid’s spread to anticipating climate-driven changes in Minnesota’s farm economy, maps helped him in one of the most important and difficult governing challenges: “the ability to convey complex information”:

That was my job as teacher. That was my job as a senior enlisted soldier. That was should have been my job in Congress, but… As Governor, the ability to use what I knew about mapping and the visual display of data to convey complex issues is really important.

This might seem a “so what?” point. But you’ll hear Walz deliver it with gusto, and helping people understand what’s complicated is the key to so many of democracy’s struggles at the moment. If you’re a GIS nut, you’ll want to see this part of the speech. And if you’re not, you can get an idea of why the technology matters.

Finally, starting around time 32:00, comes a brief, concluding, impassioned appeal for the importance of telling the stories, of how public efforts and scientific progress can bring people together and make life better.

“Look, this is a problem we have in Minnesota—Minnesota Lutherans,” he said:

If you do something good and talk about it, it doesn't count.

We need to drop that and talk like hell about the good work that we're doing in GIS. Talk about the tools that we have, talk about the impacts that we're making, measure them and show people. It’s not too difficult for people to start understanding: My kids have enough food. My water is clean.

Walz was scrupulously non-partisan. But he was identifying a major Democratic party challenge since the days of Bill Clinton²: telling the story of what they have done.

Again, my goal is to let you know about this speech, and give you a way to learn more about this recent addition to the “mentioned” list. [Update Also, if you watch to the very end, you’ll see an intriguing Easter Egg involving a now in-the-news soft drink.] Whether or not he joins Harris on the national ticket, what he’s done in Minnesota, and how he talks about it, deserve attention.

And by the way, as soon as Walz finished, the 20,000 members of the audience—tech-oriented, mainly young, his “fellow geographers”—erupted in a spontaneous and excited-sounding round of cheers and a standing ovation.

1. I’ve realized that most of my books follow the same plot line: Let me tell you about this relatively unknown person, who has ideas that are changing your world. Long ago that was the role John Boyd and many of his colleagues played in my book National Defense. More recently it’s the idea that Deb and I wanted to convey about the innovators and local patriots we’d seen all around the country, in our Our Towns work.

2. Despite their many obvious differences, the two 20th century presidents who stood out for their gift of explaining things that are complicated were FDR and Bill Clinton.