Harris May Regret Choosing Walz if the Election Comes Down to Pennsylvania
Gov. Josh Shapiro would have been the safest option.
By picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running-mate, Vice President Kamala Harris made a solid, safe choice. But he wasn’t the safest one.
Walz boasts many political virtues that will serve the Democratic ticket well. For starters, his All-American personal biography seems designed by an artificial intelligence bot to attract voters across the spectrum.
He grew up on a farm in the Midwest. At age 17 he joined the Army National Guard, where he rose to the rank of command sergeant major by the time he retired in 2005. He got a teaching degree at a state college, instructed high school students in geography, and became a football coach, winning two state championships.
After entering politics in his 40s, Walz beat a Republican incumbent in a rural Minnesota Congressional district and won re-election five times. He did that in part by accommodating conservative sensibilities enough to win the approval of the National Rifle Association at the time.
After becoming Minnesota’s governor, Walz built a strong progressive record. Backed by a Democratic-controlled Legislature since 2022, he signed legislation safeguarding abortion rights, preserving healthcare options for transgender youth, and providing free lunches to all children in public schools.
As he showed in his remarkably effective debut rally with Harris on Tuesday, Walz wows Democratic audiences with a happy-warrior demeanor that’s folksy, funny, and feisty all at once. In just a few recent television appearances, Walz popularized the attack on former President Donald Trump and his running-mate J.D. Vance as “weird.”
Add all that to his personal compatibility with Harris, and Walz met the running mate’s core qualification: “Do no harm.”
Unless, that is, Harris and Trump end up in a photo-finish – one decided by what forecasters call the “tipping point” state of 2024.
That state is Pennsylvania. Any plausible Democratic victory map includes its 19 electoral votes.