Tim Walz

In the spring of 2022 I found myself for a week or so to be a member of staff for a man who was running in the Democratic primaries in Minnesota, hoping to be the next Congressional representative in Minnesota's 1st District.

The 1st Congressional District of Minnesota is largely rural, with towns like Red Wing being the main population centers. Red Wing is mainly known for its prison, and its shoe company. It's a lovely, though somewhat run-down and post-industrial, little town.

During the week I was there there were these gatherings all over the district that all the folks running for the Congressional seat attended, along with local Democratic Party elected officials and volunteers.

Governor Walz was running for office again along with other state-level Democrats, and they were busily traveling from one of these party gatherings to the next, not just in the 1st district, but in all the rest of them as well.

He and his entourage arrived at several of the events my candidate and I attended. Each time, they interrupted whatever was going on to give their pitch for the Democratic slate, and when they were done, they sped away to their next destination. In one case, my candidate was in the middle of his allotted three minutes to speak to the assembled group in a high school auditorium in some little town, when Governor Walz and his group entered the room.

One of the local Democrats, or perhaps a member of the Walz team, came onto the stage and asked my candidate to stop speaking and let the governor's team do their thing, rather than waiting until his three minutes were up first. They let him resume giving his three-minute speech after the governor and his crew were gone.

Walz seemed to have the same pitch wherever he went, or if he were modifying it for more rural areas like the one he was in, I couldn't tell. Mostly he talked about how intolerant the Republicans were, and how he and the Democrats, on the other hand, supported the rights of teenagers to choose their own gender.

Walz owned the stage, moving around and engaging with the audience, like someone who had given more than a few speeches in his life. People seemed impressed to have such a local celebrity in their midst. The content of his speech, however, didn't appear to me to be connecting with anyone in the room.

I don't know anything else about the guy, but he certainly struck me as a Democrat who embraced whatever the Democratic Party talking points for that election cycle were supposed to be, and he seemed to be functioning on autopilot. None of which is shocking, but I thought I'd share my very limited experience being in the same room as the guy who may soon be the Vice President of the US.