Who is Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor picked as Kamala Harris's running mate?

Former congressman's Middle East record includes support for Israel and nuclear deal

Tim Walz speaks at an event at Dutch Creek Farms in Northfield, Minnesota. AP

US Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Tim Walz to replace her in her current title as she campaigns for the presidency, creating a more progressive ticket for the Democratic Party as it heads into the pivotal November elections.

Ms Harris said that Mr Walz has “delivered for working families like his”, indicating that his track record of accomplishing more progressive agenda items at the state level played a significant role in her decision.

Mr Walz, 60, was born in the Midwestern state of Nebraska. He worked as a teacher, coached American football and served in the Army National Guard – including teaching stints in China and military deployments to Europe – before entering politics.

He has overseen significant Democratic policy victories in Minnesota since becoming governor in 2019, after about a decade of serving at the national level in the House of Representatives.

That has included expanding reproductive healthcare protections in the state in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's overturning of the federal right to an abortion – a crucial campaign issue for Democrats as they battle anti-abortion Republicans.

As state-level restrictions on reproductive health care ramped up across the US, last year, Minnesota enacted a state constitutional statute recognising the right to an abortion.

Mr Walz recently oversaw the approval of universal free school meals for students, a policy that Ms Harris and US President Joe Biden have worked to expand at the national level.

He has also touted his record of “laying the groundwork to get Minnesota to 100 per cent clean electricity by 2040”, in line with the Biden administration's landmark work to move the US to clean energy and promote electric vehicles under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Progressive climate action groups like Sunrise Movement praised the decision, adding that the “decision shows that Kamala Harris is taking seriously what is needed to rebuild the 2020 Biden-Harris coalition and energise young people, people of colour and union voters ahead of November,” communications director Stevie O'Hanlon said.

But even moderate voices, like former Democrat and now Independent senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, appeared pleased with the choice.

“All of the candidates were strong and any one of them would have been a great pick, but I can think of no one better than Governor Walz to help bring our country closer together and bring balance back to the Democratic Party,” Mr Manchin said on Tuesday.

Views on the Middle East

As a member of Congress, the vice presidential candidate had a track record of mainstream Democratic positions on the Middle East, including voting in support of military financing for Israel and in favour of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, spearheaded by former president Barack Obama.

He served on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and was a strong advocate for executive restraint on US military action, including eventual criticism of the war in Iraq and calls for restraint from the Obama administration during the civil war in Syria.

Before the outbreak of war in Syria, he went on a diplomatic trip to the Middle East in 2009 and met both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

He would later describe his meeting with Mr Al Assad as “very candid” and “strange”, adding in 2013 that the trip made it “obvious to me he was just trying to hold power for power's sake, and now we're seeing the ramifications of that”.

As the Assad regime's crackdown on opposition escalated and as Mr Obama spoke of “red lines” over chemical weapons, Mr Walz joined more than 100 House members in signing a letter to the president emphasising the constitutional requirement for congressional approval before taking military action against Syria.

'Weird' Republicans

Mr Walz's rise to the vice presidential nomination this year seemed to materialise after he coined “weird” as a now-viral critique of the opposing Republican ticket of former president Donald Trump and his alt-right running mate JD Vance.

That criticism specifically zeroes in on the far-right-supported restrictions on access to reproductive health care, reversing strides made on LGBTQ issues, and Mr Vance's recent comments about how the country is run by Democratic “childless cat ladies” and “corporate oligarchs”.

It marks a shift in Democrats' rhetoric since President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign, which was characterised by more serious and existential warnings about the threat to democracy posed by a second Trump term.

Democrats, including Ms Harris, have since run with “weird” at several campaign rallies and in some comedic-leaning super Pac advertisements.

Republicans have meanwhile ramped up their criticism of Mr Walz.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said without evidence that a Harris-Walz White House would consider progressive Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a fellow Minnesotan and Muslim American, for secretary of state or defence. Ms Omar, a progressive, is a frequent target for Republicans.

And far-right Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who has spread Islamophobic rhetoric against Ms Omar, said on X that “Kamala Harris put an avowed socialist on her ticket”.

“It’s now truly Maga [Make American Great Again] vs Marxism,” she said.