Charismatic turkey fails to win pardon from Gov. Walz

Benjamin Franklin wanted a turkey for the national bird. The 40-pound bruiser tom hailing from a McLeod County farm that hopped atop the table Tuesday at the State Capitol probably thought the Founding Father was talking about him.

“Ahh-yeah,” cheered Gov. Tim Walz, in a laid-back sweater vest and blazer, at the annual Thanksgiving ceremony in the oil-painting-adorned reception room. “If you speak at the Worthington Turkey Day event … you have to kiss the turkey.”

No one dared get any closer.

Tuesday marked the return of Minnesota farm country’s favorite anticlimactic moment: when state officials recognize, but don’t spare, a turkey from his seasonal dinner-plate fate.

Unlike the two lucky birds from Northfield that flew to Washington D.C. this week for high-thread-count sheets at the Willard InterContinental and a Monday morning pardoning by President Joe Biden at the White House, the turkey named “Tom” by his FFA handler, Paisley VonBerge, and who spread wide his wings for a couple emphatic sweeps before staring down First Lady Gwen Walz, will accept a more traditional turkey fate.

“After today, this turkey will go back to my farm to be enjoyed the way turkeys were intended to be enjoyed,” VonBerge said.

It’s unclear the origin of this Minnesota Nice tradition, though it is prized in a state with more turkey producers, and processors, than anywhere across the country.

Still, Tuesday’s ceremony had added political weight, as the governor, who just weeks ago drew the white-hot spotlight of a U.S. presidential race, continues to return to the ordinary, sometimes mundane ceremonies of running a state.

“They do it differently in D.C.,” Walz said, referring to Biden’s pardon. “Here in Minnesota we know turkeys are delicious.”

Walz appeared jovial, joking about racing turkeys in Worthington and alluding to a lake near Hutchinson where he and his wife were married.

For the second consecutive day, the state’s chief executive, who campaigned since early August as running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris in her ultimately foiled bid for the presidency, took questions from the press behind a podium.

Topics ranged from a judge who halted Minnesota’s cannabis business license lottery to mining in northern Minnesota to whether he was regretful for joining Harris.

“No regrets,” he said, noting the Harris-Walz ticket campaigned on a message “that 75 million Americans liked, but not quite enough.”

On Monday evening, President-elect Donald Trump announced on social media his plan to impose tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, a move that could draw retaliation.

Speaking beside Walz on Tuesday, Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen noted 74% of the state’s agriculture exports are to Mexico.

“Our main partners are always Mexico and Canada,” Petersen said.

Asked whether the DFL losing full control of the state House was a verdict on DFL governance, Walz said, “I see a very close and divided country.”

It’s also a country that largely comes together for Thanksgiving, for football, a balloon parade in New York City, and turkey, even if the red-wattled, strange-footed, flightless bird never scaled to the heights of the bald eagle.