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--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noel King with Dana Ferguson.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: Thanks for having me, Noel.
--:-- Noel King: So, if you and I were running for president, who would be at the top of the ticket, you think? Wouldn't we both be at the top of the ticket?
--:-- Dana Ferguson: [laughs] No, someone's got to be second banana. Oh, Veep. Someone's got to be Veep.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, are you old enough to be president?
--:-- Dana Ferguson: Thank you for that. I have so many grays, Noel. More than me. It's presidential. I'd die mine.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, well, you're my pick for president. But the point of the matter is Kamala made her pick today for Veep. Walls? Walls. Walls. Minnesota Governor Tim Walls.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: Tim Walls. And you're going to Minnesota to talk to the Minnesotans? And you're going to the office to talk to Andrew Prokof.
--:-- Noel King: Let's do it. Today Explained. Love it. Great. That was good. That was like a minute. Perfect. Send it on in.
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--:-- Noel King: Today is going to be explained to you. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Dana Ferguson.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: Dana is a senior political reporter at Minnesota Public Radio, NPR.
--:-- Noel King: Dana, tell us about Governor Tim Walz.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: He comes from a background of being a geography teacher. He grew up in rural Nebraska, and he talks about that quite a bit.
--:-- Noel King: So putting money into teaching our young people, it's where my family came from. My dad's parents were butchers. They were immigrants and they owned a butcher shop in Tequimah, Nebraska.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: He worked there for a while, met his wife, Gwen Whipple. They got married and ended up coming back to Minnesota. That's where she is from and taught in southern Minnesota in a city called Mankato.
--:-- Noel King: Walls harkens back to a story about how he was at a political rally for then President George W. Bush. He was with a group of students who had John Kerry apparel on, and they were asked to leave the rally.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: And he was deeply concerned about that. He thought that the students had a right to be there and to be part of the political process. That inspired him to run for Congress in southern Minnesota.
--:-- Noel King: He was able to win in a deep red district and serve there for more than 10 years before deciding to run for governor.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: And what's his reputation, Minnesota? Who likes him? Who are his enemies?
--:-- Noel King: So he's had to go through some pretty difficult circumstances as a governor in his first term. He worked in divided government. At that time, the Senate was Republican-controlled. The House was Democratic-controlled.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: So he had to figure out compromise. He had to pass a budget that both Republicans and Democrats could agree to. That was a little bit difficult, but Republican leaders at the Capitol said they had a generally good working relationship with him during that time.
--:-- Noel King: But that changed during COVID. The process of how we as a state and how we as a nation respond to these things is really important.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: There was a lot of disagreement, mostly on a partisan level, about how the state should aim to curb the spread of COVID. Republican leaders felt that he took too firm a stance and didn't let people make their own decisions.
--:-- Noel King: On the Republican side, he has not made a lot of friends, but I would say progressive folks here are big fans of the governors. He was instrumental in passing many significant policy wins for them that they'd been working on for a long time in 2023.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: 2023. That includes free school meals, protections for abortion access and gender-affirming care in Minnesota, paid family and medical leave, legalizing marijuana.
--:-- Noel King: So they point back to the policy gains that they made last year and just say the country could be ready for a number of those on a federal scale.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: For four years, despite enormous headwinds and complicated politics, we did get a lot of good things done for the people of Minnesota. But now we have a new mandate for action, a chance to set aside the old fights in favor of doing something truly historic for our children and our grandchildren.
--:-- Noel King: This is a moment we have been building towards for a long time. Many people in the United States have not heard a ton about Tim Walz, but if we have heard about him, we've heard about him on guns.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: He's had a real evolution in his thinking on guns and on gun control. And it is certainly something that Republicans will bring up with him now on the ticket.
--:-- Noel King: Can you walk us through how he's evolved here?
--:-- Dana Ferguson: Yeah, he was previously very strong on wanting folks to be able to have access to firearms. He was endorsed by the NRA.
--:-- Noel King: But since his time serving in Congress and really following the Parkland shooting, he has changed his tune.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: I'm a veteran and I'm a hunter. And for many years I was one of the best shots in Congress and I got the dang trophies to prove it I know guns as well as anyone but I sick and tired of talking about that
--:-- Noel King: Because I'm not just a veteran, not just a hunter, not just a gun owner. I'm a father, and for many years I was a teacher. And we all know damn well, weapons of war have no place in our schools, in our churches, in our banks, or anyone wants to live in peace.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: And he's really come out strongly in support of more restrictions on firearms. The Democratic-led legislature and the governor were able to put in additional restrictions, red flag laws, stronger background checks for firearms, tougher penalties this year for folks who buy a gun and give it to someone who's not legally allowed to have one.
--:-- Noel King: So he really has changed. When I first started in Congress, I had an A rating from the NRA. I have straight Fs now. I sleep just fine at night.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: He thinks that folks who own guns want to be safer about it. They are already locking up their firearms when they're not in use and trying to make sure they don't fall into hands of folks who aren't meant to have them.
--:-- Noel King: Hmm. So in recent weeks, the governor's been credited with coming up with the weird line of attack, the idea that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and their like are just strange people.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: These guys are just weird. That's what they are. That is weird behavior. And I I don't think you call it anything else. Once again, it's weird. I don't want J.D. Vance talking about my family.
--:-- Noel King: I certainly don't want him talking about my my daughter or my wife. I wonder what that tells us about him.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: So you could say, well, maybe he's a brilliant strategist or you could say, well, maybe he's just a normal shoot from the hip Midwesterner. What is your impression of of Walls on this front, on the national front?
--:-- Noel King: I think it comes more from his background as a teacher. He does have a way of being just direct, concise. He likes to use these one-liners to make a point and kind of dig in on political adversaries.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: During COVID, he would give these updates and sort of lay out the strategy of what the state was going to do to address the problem. And it was in a similar sort of teacher moment of just, here's what we're dealing with, here's what you need to know, and here's what we're going to do about it.
--:-- Noel King: So to me, it wasn't that surprising that he could find a term like weird and brand it this way, but apparently the country really took hold of it.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: And by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird?
--:-- Noel King: The country took hold of it and it offered the Democrats a very compelling line of attack.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: What else do you think he brings to the Harris ticket?
--:-- Noel King: I think that he'll be able to really communicate and connect with rural voters in a way that the vice president might not be able to.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: He talks quite a bit about having grown up in rural Nebraska and just small town issues that she might not be quite as connected to.
--:-- Noel King: I think folks appreciate the fact that he has a background as a veteran serving in the National Guard. He is experienced having served in Congress as well as as a governor.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: So I think folks appreciate his diverse experiences coming into this position.
--:-- Noel King: You spent quite a bit of time in the past few weeks digging into governor walls. Are there any possible weaknesses for the campaign?
--:-- Dana Ferguson: Yeah. I think that folks, especially on Trump's side, will point to the governor's response to the riot stemming from George Floyd's murder.
--:-- Noel King: There are some that feel the governor didn't act quickly enough to call out the National Guard and the state patrol to curb some of that.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: He perhaps froze under pressure. They might point to a COVID-19 era program that was a federal program, but administered through the state here that was subject to widespread fraud.
--:-- Noel King: That's called Feeding Our Future. It was meant to help kids get meals during the pandemic, but a number of folks dipped into that money and misused it.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: They might also point to an arrest that he had decades ago in Nebraska for speeding, and he seemed to be driving under the influence.
--:-- Noel King: We've already seen that mugshot crop back up, so I would expect that he will speak about that.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: The Democrats seem to have realized that a lot of Americans are tired of dire existential negative politicking and are looking for a little bit of levity.
--:-- Noel King: It's the reason that Kamala Harris's laugh has not proved to be a problem for her, but instead something that people enjoy.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: You know the governor. What do you expect to see from him in the next 100 days or so as he gets on the road and starts to campaign?
--:-- Noel King: I would expect to see him really getting out, talking to people. That's where he is the most charged up.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: He, as a former teacher and as a dad, he loves being around kids. So I could see appearances where they might be in a classroom or talking to families.
--:-- Noel King: He uses a lot of dad jokes, so don't be surprised when that comes around.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: And if he feels like he's got a good one, you're going to hear it more than once.
--:-- Noel King: What's his best dad joke? Oh, wow. I might have to think about that and get back to you.
--:-- Dana Ferguson: There have been a lot of them over the years.
--:-- Noel King: Dana Ferguson, senior political reporter, Minnesota Public Radio.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sean, is that you?
--:-- Dana Ferguson: It's me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're going to Vox next. Coming up. Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Walls is the pick. Today Explained is the program. Andrew Prokop is now the guest.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew, as we've heard the former president say, the VP pick doesn't really matter. But you'd never know that from like the last, I don't know, two weeks of intense speculation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The extent to which the VP pick matters for determining who will win this upcoming election is generally a little overstated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, of course, the VP pick matters a great deal in determining the future of the party doesn't guarantee anything. But obviously, Barack Obama's VP was Joe Biden, whose VP was Kamala Harris and whose VP is now Tim Walz.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So, you know, judging by past precedent, he has a pretty good shot at potentially running for the big job one day. But for now, he is a second banana. So tell us how Tim Walz became Barack Obama's VP's VP's VP.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, Harris started her search, and it seemed to focus mostly on white male politicians who are from the Midwest or other potentially important electoral regions.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So there was a six-person shortlist at one point, which was Walsh, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So many different kinds of white men. How did she choose the one? It's real diversity.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So she basically watered down that list to a final showdown between Walsh and Josh Shapiro.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Throughout this process, it has seen to most observers, myself included, that Josh Shapiro was the more likely pick.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Simply because Pennsylvania is the single most important state on the electoral map. Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes. And when you run the different scenarios of how the election could go, it is very hard for Harris to win without Pennsylvania.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, by crude electoral calculation, Shapiro would seem to be really the obvious pick. He is a popular incumbent governor. He's been viewed as a political rising star.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So what happened? The first thing that happened is that Walsh kind of unexpectedly went viral.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He went viral with his comments on MSNBC calling Republicans weird.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It was an interesting tonal shift from the Democrats' typical portrayal as Donald Trump as a terrifying threat to democracy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It had a bit more of a light mockery to it. So he got a lot of attention there.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But as governor of Minnesota, he eventually won a trifecta, Democrats in control of the whole state and passed a sweeping progressive agenda.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there are a lot of other governors who did similar things. And so it's a little unclear why the left became so hot on Waltz in particular, unless you understand the greater context around Shapiro.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So you're saying Waltz didn't just fall out of a coconut tree. Well, yes, yes, yes. He exists in the context of all which came before him, which is the fact that there was increasing resistance, opposition and controversy within parts of the party around the idea of picking Josh Shapiro.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is for a few reasons. One is the particularly divisive issue in democratic politics of Israel-Gaza.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Shapiro has a long record of being pretty solidly supportive of Israel. He has evolved with other Democrats on this issue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He says nowadays, he says Benjamin Netanyahu is a terrible prime minister who should step down.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But, you know, he was pretty tough on campus protesters. He has a long history and track record of saying things that are pretty strongly supportive of Israel at times in opposition to Palestinians.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In 1993, Shapiro, then a 20 year old student at the University of Rochester, wrote Palestinians and Israel could not peacefully coexist.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Shapiro, who is Jewish, wrote in part, Palestinians, quote, do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own, unquote.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so, you know, fairly or unfairly, it's not really clear how much his selection would mean for actual policy decisions. But he became sort of tarred with this and the anti-war faction of the party, which has been critical of Israel, decided they wanted to stop Shapiro from getting picked.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are a few other issues that came up. Shapiro had supported a school choice bill in Pennsylvania that teachers unions didn't like.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Eventually because of pressure from them he ended up vetoing that bill
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that ended up kind of pleasing nobody because now the unions were still mad he let it get that far.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the school choice people were now mad that he chickened out at the end.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Further, there were a couple of scandals specific to him that were starting to get some media attention.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: His chief of staff in the Pennsylvania governor's office, there was an allegation of sexual misconduct, claims about a possible cover-up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was also an old case that he had some role in overseeing at the Pennsylvania attorney general's office.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: This involved a young woman dying with many stab wounds and what was initially ruled a suicide, but her family insists it was murder and there's a cover-up and articles were being written about this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, I tend to think that, we don't know why Harris made her decision, but I tend to think that all these things kind of piled up and at the last minute, it just seemed like too much.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And it seemed like picking Waltz would make her coalition happy. And in the end, that is what she chose to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In doing so, did she potentially sacrifice Pennsylvania or sacrifice an easier path to Pennsylvania? Or is there no way to know?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think there's no way to know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's been a lot written about how VP picks don't actually make a difference. But when you look at the history a little more closely, it's very rare for a presidential candidate to actually pick a popular incumbent governor from a very important swing state as their running mate.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It hasn't happened in decades. People keep making their VP picks for other reasons, like Harris apparently did this time around.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, people say there's little evidence that he could have delivered Pennsylvania. I think that's fair to say.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Obviously, if she ends up losing this election because of Pennsylvania, there are going to be some pretty serious second thoughts about this choice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a lot to dislike about J.D. Vance. I love you guys.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It feels like Democrats are having a lot of fun going after him based on his positions, based on some potentially extreme viewpoints he holds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What strategy do you think Republicans are going to take against Walls?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So we're starting to see early signs of this. I think they're not sure yet, just like they're not really sure how to attack Harris yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the thing I've seen that has caught on most so far is that they are blaming Walsh for being governor during the tumult of 2020 and the George Floyd protests, which hit Minnesota particularly hard.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There's like circulating pictures of buildings burning down and saying, you know, this is Tim Walsh's Minnesota.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is what he wants to bring to America. Every voter in Minnesota needs to know that when the violent mobs of anarchists and looters and Marxists came to burn down Minneapolis four years ago, remember me?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I couldn't get your governor to act.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the more sophisticated version of the criticism is that they argue that he was too weak to stand up to these rioters and that he would do the same thing if in office that the selection of Walsh by Harris is also a sign that the Democratic Party remains captured by the left, fearful of offending the left and deferential to the left.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Hmm. We're going to be seeing a lot of this dude for the next four months. Three. Three. My God. Sorry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Starting tonight in Philadelphia, what is the Harris-Walls campaign strategy moving forward, you think, other than, you know, Project 2025, weirdos, extremist, whatever?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think they want to be happy warriors. That is kind of the vibe that they have been going for and that Walsh particularly has embraced.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They want to argue that Democrats want to make people's lives better, to help people.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Waltz talks a lot about the universal free school lunch and breakfast bill that he passed in Minnesota last year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, that's the sort of thing he wants to say. We just want to help people. We want to do common sense things to make people's lives better in contrast to these bizarre Republicans who are obsessed with their own personal feuds and culture wars.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And we don't want to play that game. We want to we want to help you. We care about people like you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that is what they're trying to go for. And whether it works, of course, a different question.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: AndrewProCopVox.com
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today's episode was produced by Peter Balanon-Rosen and Amanda Llewellyn.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It was edited by Matthew Collette, and fact-checking was a team effort led by Amina El-Sadi.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We were mixed by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christen's daughter.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I am Sean Ramos from...
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Boom, bang, bam. That's it. We did it, Joe. We did it, Joe.
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