When Kamala Harris tapped Tim Walz as her running mate, the conventional wisdom on the Left was that the Minnesota governor would help her campaign make inroads with rural voters and middle America. He’s a hunter! He wears Carhartt! The rubes will love him!
It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. After the Democrats forced Joe Biden off the ticket and anointed Harris as the handpicked candidate of the party establishment, Democrats did see a boost in the polls, but Harris is still struggling in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Walz doesn’t seem to be helping her connect with small town and rural voters.
POLITICO recently went to Walz’s former congressional district to find out why so many of his own constituents have soured on him, and found plenty of folks eager to explain what’s changed over the years.
I met Jeffrey in the field house overlooking the football field where Albert Lea’s high school football team, the Tigers, were getting beat. As the sun set over the far endzone, Jeffrey adjusted a window shade for a group of mostly older alumni watching from inside.
They weren’t exactly fans of the governor. There was Jim Munyer, the retired teacher I’d met at a Civil War Roundtable the previous night, who called Walz a “chameleon.” He suspected Walz was really more “California East, or California Midwest, I guess.”
There was Lowell Peterson, who told me over coffee earlier that day that when he saw Walz’s camo-print cap, all he saw was a desire to “be a friend to everybody.” And, he said, “I don’t like that crap, sucking up to everybody.” […]
— Read More: bearingarms.com
