Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the largest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for vice president on the third night of the party's convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’s decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest opportunity yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, brief vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged over other, better-known contenders from key swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he criticized Republican candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, as “weird.” That word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for his insults, and catapulted the outspoken Walz into national prominence.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher and football coach. It is likely an attempt to underscore his oft-stated desire to bring joy back to the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday night.
Pelosi focused her brief speech on the deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021, during which she took shelter in a safe location as Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden's presidential candidacy.
Referring to Trump, he said: “Let us not forget who attacked democracy on January 6th. He did it.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must elect leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
He also highlighted his time working with Walz for 12 years in Congress and praised him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, it seems to me we have a pretty clear choice: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other candidate, who has demonstrated even more than in the first round, that he cares about me, about me and about myself,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, joked that “the only personal vanity I want to claim is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was an ironic joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris' work at the Golden Arches as a young woman, saying, “I'll be so happy when she actually walks into the White House as president because she'll break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald's.”
The speech followed graphic video of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer and former Army sergeant, told the crowd that he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but that “nothing prepared me for January 6th.”
“I was attacked with a flagpole tied to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump called out our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who bravely revealed that Kamala Harris was Indian in a cooking video on Instagram,” a reference to the Trump campaign. false demand that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters into thinking she was also black.
Walz's speech is expected to draw heavily on his rural roots.
Before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing the Republican-leaning 1st District in rural southern Minnesota.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans, led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, have sharply criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of deserting his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit was ordered to deploy to Iraq. He rose to the rank of command sergeant major, one of the highest ranks in the Army, but retired as a sergeant major because he did not complete the courses required to maintain the higher title.
On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been trying out insulting nicknames for the former president's opponents, sent out an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have praised Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political rise began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has enthusiastically embraced his personality: a Midwestern dad who hunts, gives advice on how to fix cars, brags about his recipe for tater tot hot dish and who took Harris’s call asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling Harris-Walz camouflage caps, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz's wardrobe, saying, “You can see that those flannel shirts he's wearing don't come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they've been through some things.”
In the audience, Walz's wife, Gwen, nodded cordially.
