As a 50-year resident of Minnesota, I’ve followed vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s career closely.
Here are some things Americans should know.
First, Minnesota hasn’t prospered under Walz’s leadership.
Historically, ours was a prosperous state, with a per-capita gross domestic product above the national average.
But that advantage has been slipping; in 2023, for the first time ever, we fell below the national average.
This is the result of the high tax, out-of-control spending, heavy regulation and anti-growth policies of the Walz administration.
Minnesota was also always a low-crime state.
But Gov. Walz is anti-law enforcement, and his dithering for four days while Minneapolis burned during the George Floyd riots triggered a crime spree that continues to this day.
After five years of Tim Walz, Minnesota is officially a high-crime state for the first time in our history: Our per-capita rate of serious crimes is now above the national average.
Education is a similar story. Minnesotans used to be proud of their public schools, but during the Walz administration, while spending has skyrocketed, student achievement has plummeted.
Now, more than half of all K-12 students in Minnesota’s public schools can neither read nor do math at grade level.
The most recent reading scores for 4th and 8th graders are the lowest ever recorded, and 64% of 11th graders can’t do math at grade level.
This decline has something to do with the fact that Walz shut the schools down during COVID, and more to do with the fact that our schools are now emphasizing political indoctrination more than academic achievement.
What happens when a state’s government has lousy policies?
People start to leave — and Minnesota has joined California, New York and Illinois as a state that many are moving out of and few people want to move into.
We now lose people, on a net basis, in every age range and every income bracket over $50,000. Almost all of those losses are to lower-tax, less liberal states.
With a record like that, how did the governor win re-election in 2022?
First, note that Walz won his first term in 2018 by a 12-point margin, 54%-42%.
By 2022, his popularity had slipped; he won by seven points, 52% to 45%.
And Walz was aided that year when the election turned into a referendum on abortion, which is popular with Minnesota swing voters, and by the fact that Democrats outspent Republicans by three to one, mostly with out-of-state money.
With this record and his declining popularity, why did Democrats put Walz on their national ticket?
They don’t need him to carry Minnesota, which they haven’t lost since 1976.
Apparently they will try to market him as a small-town guy and a veteran.
That’s ironic, since Walz is despised in rural Minnesota, in part because he has expressed contempt for rural people.
He famously told a group of Democrats they needn’t worry about the countryside turning red, since those places consist of “mostly rocks and cows.”
Thousands of rural residents banded together as the Rocks and Cows of Minnesota; they put up anti-Walz billboards across the state and sold Rocks and Cows merchandise.
In 2022, Walz was routed in rural Minnesota.
As for being a veteran, Walz did serve in the Minnesota National Guard for 24 years, rising to a high rank. But now his service has become a flash point of controversy.
In 2005, his Guard unit was deployed to Iraq. After telling his fellow Guardsmen that he’d go, Walz changed his mind and resigned from the Guard instead.
Many of his fellow Guardsmen bitterly resented his abandoning the unit.
He also has been accused of exaggerating his rank when he retired, and was captured on video claiming, falsely, that he carried “weapons of war” “in war.”
That was clearly false.
So it seems that Walz’s military service is more likely to offend veterans than to impress them.
Yes, many Minnesotans are proud of one of our own finding his way onto a national ticket.
Running for vice president is something of a Minnesota specialty, with Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.
But those of us who have followed Walz’s policies and their consequences more closely are horrified at the thought that he could find himself near the seat of power in Washington.
Tim Walz shouldn’t be allowed to do to America what he has done to Minnesota.
John Hinderaker is president of the Center of the American Experiment.
