Vice President Kamala Harris today chose Gov Tim Walz, Democrat of Minnesota, to be her running mate in the upcoming presidential election.
(Tony Webster via Flickr Creative Commons)Mr Walz started teaching social studies and geography at Mankato West High School in Minnesota in 1996 and eventually served as a football coach there, after a short teaching stint at Alliance High School in Alliance, Nebraska. In 1999, West won the Class 4A state title, and Mr Walz kept coaching until 2002. He served in Congress from 2007 to 2019, representing Minnesota’s 1st congressional district before returning to the state as its governor.
USA Today tracked down a few of “Coach Walz’s” former pupils.
“Tim Walz is a very down-to-earth human being,” one former student who’s now a city planner in St Paul, Minnesota, says. “When you see him and when you talk to him, he’s very relatable. I think that’s a huge asset for the Harris team.”
As governor, he has signed many new laws to ease life in school for the state’s students, including one that provides free breakfast and lunch for all students. Minnesota was the fourth state to offer school lunches to all students, an early adopter of a policy that has become a growing national trend.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has signed a law guaranteeing free breakfast and lunch for all students in the state, regardless of how much money their parents make. Tens of thousands of food-insecure kids will benefit. pic.twitter.com/500q4acTre
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 17, 2023
He has also come to be known as a governor who pushes a climate change agenda, having signed a law requiring electricity producers in the state to generate all power from sources other than fossil fuels by 2040, The New York Times reported. That might make him low-hanging fruit for Republicans during the campaign, who probably consider policies he implemented in Minnesota “radical,” but he was responding to urgent climate matters.
“As I sign this legislation, communities from one end of our state to the other are looking at months of rebuilding after an extreme weather event exacerbated by climate change,” the Times quoted him as saying in June after catastrophic flooding devastated parts of the state. “This is a measure that will help protect our environment and get the clean energy projects that are going to help fight climate change in motion.”
