Minnesota voters help decide whether to send Gov. Walz to Washington

Minnesotans will help decide Tuesday whether to make history by electing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, or to return GOP former President Donald Trump to the White House.

If elected, Harris would be the first female president and Walz would become the third Minnesotan elected to the vice presidency. Harris and Walz ran a compressed campaign as she tapped him for the ticket in early August shortly after President Joe Biden stepped aside and just before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Walz sought to join Minnesota’s favorite sons, the late vice presidents Walter F. Mondale and Hubert H. Humphrey, who served, respectively, with former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Lyndon B. Johnson. Polls showed Harris with a slight but consistent lead over the Republican ticket in the state.

Before Biden’s departure, Trump rallied Minnesota Republicans by saying he planned to flip Minnesota red in this year’s presidential election, taking the state’s 10 electoral votes.

Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio appeared before a capacity crowd at their first joint rally as a ticket in St. Cloud in late July. That visit followed a Trump speech at the Republican Party’s Lincoln Reagan Dinner in St. Paul in May. “We want a landslide in your state, and we want a landslide in our nation that is too big to rig,” Trump said during his 80-minute speech in St. Paul.

At both stops, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the Republican who represents Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District, stood with and vouched for Trump. In person and on social media, Emmer consistently touted team Trump, calling Walz a stuffed suit and saying, “Fraud, mismanagement, and negligence are the mantra of the Walz administration.”

Harris picked Walz for the national ticket days after Trump’s trip to St. Cloud. Her only stop in Minnesota came long before she led the ticket: She made a historic visit in March to the Planned Parenthood Clinic in St. Paul with Walz at her side as they talked about supporting reproductive care.

Mostly skirting Minnesota, all four candidates and their surrogates made frequent forays into neighboring Wisconsin, a swingier state. Harris and Walz preached joy over division. Trump and Vance talked about protecting the border, mass deportations, tariffs on foreign imports and ending inflation.

As he campaigned, Walz spoke of the progressive victories of his six-year gubernatorial tenure, including the many new laws passed by the DFL-controlled Legislature in 2023 and 2024. Across the country, he repeated the refrain: “Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital — you win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”

He talked of free meals for all Minnesota school kids, reproductive health care protections, paid family and medical leave, universal background checks for gun purchases and red flag laws allowing friends and family to alert a judge when gun owners appear to be a danger to themselves or others.

Harris called him “Coach Walz,” and he embraced his role as the ticket’s everyman, the “dad in plaid” or “America’s Sweetheart,” according to one late-night host. He told the story of his Nebraska boyhood, losing his father as a young adult and his move to Mankato with his wife, Gwen Walz, to teach.

Minnesota’s absence from the campaign travel itineraries of both parties was a strong indication that neither considered the state to be in play.

Even Walz didn’t spend much time campaigning here. Like Harris and the Republicans, he was out in the swing states that both sides wanted desperately to win: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Walz, however, didn’t miss the pheasant hunting opener Oct. 12 in Springfield, Minn., traipsing through the grass with national media in tow.

He also dropped in on Oct. 24, when he, First Lady Gwen Walz and 18-year-old son Gus Walz voted early at the Ramsey County Elections office. Afterward, Walz spoke briefly with reporters, saying he’d voted for Harris, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Fourth Congressional District Rep. Betty McCollum.

Minnesota voters watched his candidacy unfurl from afar on national TV and podcast appearances. Among his high-profile stops: “60 Minutes,” “The View,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” “The Daily Show” and “SmartLess.” He also played Madden NFL on Twitch with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a Democrat from New York.