What you should know about Gov. Tim Walz’s record in office, as he joins presidential ticket

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz could become the next vice president of the United States after Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris picked him to be her running mate on Tuesday.

The DFL governor will join Harris on a battleground state tour this week. Walz had been an effective messenger for Democrats prior to being selected as Harris’ running mate, slamming Republicans such as former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, as “weird people” and going viral in the process.

Walz’s journey to this moment has spanned decades. The 60-year-old was a soldier and public school teacher before being elected to Congress and later the governor’s office. His tenure as governor has had its highs and lows, from his criticized handling of the Minneapolis riots to a historically productive legislative session.

Here’s a look at his life and career:

Born in a small town in rural Nebraska, Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was 17. He lost his father, a school administrator, to cancer two years later, a pivotal moment that saddled his mother with medical debt and fueled Walz’s views on health care access years later.

Walz graduated with a social science degree from Chadron State College in 1989 and spent a year teaching in China before returning full time to the Army. He was deployed overseas on active duty for months — although he never saw combat — and rose to the rank of command sergeant major before retiring from the military in 2005.

While teaching, Walz met his future wife, Gwen Whipple, a native Minnesotan. The two eventually moved to Mankato, where he taught and coached high school football and where they raised their two children, Hope and Gus.

In 2004, according to Walz, he and several of his students were blocked from entering a political rally for former President George W. Bush because a student was spotted with a John Kerry sticker. Despite having no political experience, a frustrated Walz signed up to help with Kerry’s campaign and decided to run for office.

First elected to Congress in 2006, Walz won re-election five times in southern Minnesota’s mostly rural, conservative First District.

He was the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to serve in the U.S. House and was named the ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in 2017. In Washington, Walz focused on veterans’ issues such as mental health, suicide and pain management. He called for funding to research medical cannabis treatment for veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain.

The Democrat had a flair for bipartisanship in Congress: More than half of the bills he co-sponsored between 2015-2017 were introduced by non-Democrats. The legislative site GovTrack ranked Walz as the ninth most bipartisan congressmember in 2016.

Walz once earned an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, even earning the group’s endorsement. He later denounced the NRA and supported gun-control measures, such as an assault weapons ban.

In a similar shift, Walz voted in Congress for tighter vetting of refugees but said during his run for governor that he regretted it.

Walz had been in the governor’s office a little over a year when COVID-19 hit in 2020. He had some early successes, including negotiating a two-year budget deal with a divided Legislature, but there was no playbook on how to handle a global pandemic.

He took sweeping executive actions to slow the spread of the virus, issuing a stay-at-home order and mask mandates and shuttering businesses and schools. During a global testing shortage in 2020, Walz announced a “moon shot” proposal for 5,000 daily COVID-19 diagnostic tests in Minnesota, harnessing the testing capacity of the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic.

Republicans were critical of the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes and said Walz harmed schools and businesses through his shutdown orders. They felt cut out of the response to the pandemic and tried several times to undo his executive powers. His administration was sued over some of his orders, though Walz prevailed in most of the legal challenges.

After the police murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis was engulfed by widespread protests, looting, vandalism and arson.

Law enforcement defenses were overwhelmed by the sprawling chaos, prompting neighbors to guard their own streets. Minneapolis police evacuated their Third Precinct building and then it was set ablaze. The Minnesota National Guard was ready for deployment that morning, but soldiers wouldn’t arrive to the area of the precinct until hours after it had been torched.

A National Guard Bureau spokesman said Walz was in charge of the deployment timeline.

After the precinct burned, Walz blasted the city of Minneapolis’ riot response as an “abject failure.” A spokesman for Walz said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey didn’t provide adequate information to give the Guard a mission.

Months after the riots, Frey came out and said Walz didn’t take his requests for assistance seriously until it was too late. Frey said Walz hesitated to send in the Guard.

After-action assessments of the riot response found there was a breakdown in communication between government officials.

Walz handily won re-election in 2022, despite intense criticism over his pandemic and riot response, and Democrats were propelled into narrow legislative majorities following the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Wielding their newfound power and a historic $17.5 billion budget surplus, the DFL trifecta passed billions of dollars in new funding for schools and infrastructure while checking off a long list of progressive priorities that had languished for decades.

The governor was front and center when he signed universal free school meals for students, a proposal adding abortion rights protections into law and restoring voting rights for the formerly incarcerated.

Democrats also set new climate goals, pushing Minnesota to have 100% clean electricity by 2040, while creating a statewide paid leave program, legalizing marijuana for adults, passing stricter gun laws, and giving unauthorized immigrants access to driver’s licenses.

Supporters likened the productive session to the Minnesota Miracle years of the early 1970s, when lawmakers overhauled the state government’s financing system to put more money into schools. Republicans criticized the session as highly partisan, lambasting Walz and Democrats for spending most of the surplus while raising some taxes.

Walz and his administration have made a few high-profile missteps.

After Minnesota legalized recreational marijuana last year, Walz appointed a hemp shop owner to be the state’s top cannabis regulator. The next day, cannabis entrepreneur Erin DuPree stepped down from the role after the Star Tribune reported she had sold illegal products at her hemp shop and had federal tax liens and judgments against her.

Minnesota’s nonpartisan government watchdog the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) later found the governor’s office missed some standard background check steps before the appointment of DuPree.

There have been several critical audits of state agencies during Walz’s time in office, many of them involving cases of financial mismanagement. Republicans have accused Walz and his administration of not taking fraud and waste seriously enough. Walz has rejected such claims, and his office has noted the administration has made many changes to try to prevent fraud.

The most scathing report issued by the OLA was related to the state Department of Education’s oversight of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which is accused of orchestrating one of the nation’s largest pandemic frauds. Auditors found the Education Department “failed to act on warning signs,” and that the agency’s inadequate oversight of a federally funded meals program for children created opportunities for Feeding Our Future to steal $250 million.

Walz said the audit was a “fair critique” while defending state employees for their work during a crisis: “We can always do better. Again, context matters; it was a challenging time for everybody.”