Features
Prospective Democrat Veep of the US of America
My interest was aroused, not curiosity certainly, and I gut felt Harris’ choice was a good one. Reading his detailed biography it was proven that he is a simple, kindly, sensible person with fellow feeling and different from the usual American. Also poles apart from Trump and his elite though decadent coterie of associates. Note I avoid using term ‘coterie of friends’. As was said by one of the speakers at the DNC, Trump has no friends, he is his only friend. Walz has used the word weird to describe Trump and that has stuck and is much used.
I listened to Tim Walz’s acceptance speech and my feeling of him being a good man was completely justified. He gave many personal details, even of the intense seven years of anxiety he and his wife endured when they were on fertility drugs. They named their first child Hope. Three years later Gus was born. Walz did not mention it but pictures of Gus showed him to be having Down Syndrome, very probably. The two kids, now teens, were seen in the video I watched, in tears as they listened and applauded their father. In his speech Walz said it was the honour of his life to be selected as Kamala Harris’s running mate. Who is this man was the burning question for me.
Biographical facts
Timothy James Walz, born April 6, 1964, in West Point, Nebraska, came from almost a village of very few people, who he mentioned were always concerned about each other. His father James Walz was superintendent of a town school and wife Darlene, a homemaker.
The father was also a Korean War veteran. Life was idyllic for Tim and his brother – playing football, basketball and golf, sometimes bus riding hundreds of miles to compete against other
schools in sports. His father contracted lung cancer being a chain smoker, and died in 1984. The family descended to impecunity with unpaid medical bills. Walz mentioned a social security clause they benefited from and survived. Hence his insistence on state help to families in financial difficulties and health benefits which he made law as Governor of Minnesota and promises to assist legislation that Kamala Harris proposes within these issues.
After high school at age 17, Walz joined the Army National Guard and served for 24 years. He also worked in a factory. He later graduated from Chadron State College in Nebraska. Mother and two sons moved to Texas and Tim enrolled at the University of Houston to follow East Asian studies. He went to Arkansas to work and returned in 1987. He then went to China as a teacher soon after the Tiananmen Square massacre whose aftermath affected him. He returned to his village in Nebraska in 1993 and was voted an outstanding teacher. Falling in love with co-teacher Gwen Whipple (b 1966), they were married in 1994 and moved to live in Gwen’s home state – Minnesota. By now he had his Master’s degree in education. Added to his teaching, he undertook coaching football.
He signed nomination papers to run for a House of Representative seat while a keen campaign worker for John Kerry. He was elected in 2007 and served as Congressman till 2019. He opposed the Iraq war. When in 2013 there occurred a government shutdown, he did not take his salary until the House of Reps resumed its sessions. He was reelected to the House five times before being elected 41st governor of Minnesota in 2018 and reelected in 2022.
What he stands for
Particularly during his second term as Governor, “he pushed for and signed a wide range of legislation, including tax modifications, free school meals, bolstering state infrastructure, universal gun background checks, codifying abortion rights and free college tuition for low-income families.”
It is clearly seen that he is a humane person who used his position to improve the lot of the less privileged. Also remembering his family’s travails, he has done much to help in health issues where persons get into debt because of the long illness of a family member. State security help is available to them, as it was to his mother when she was widowed. During his acceptance speech he elaborated on these issues. As Governor, he reduced taxes so the life of the middle class improved. He mentioned that all school children are given two meals in school: breakfast and lunch. He admitted he possesses a gun and is a proponent for allowing responsible adults to possess a firearm but insisted on strict controls and he mentioned that with Kamala Harris as Prez, there would be no shootings in schools.
He is for freedom of women to choose whether to continue a pregnancy or resort to a legal abortion if the foetus is the result of rape or is abnormal or she cannot afford to have a child. Free higher education for children from less affluent families is a great benefit in the State he is governor of, as many are not able to afford university tuition fees; a scheme better than loans being taken while in university and having to repay them whether employed or not soon after leaving university.
The lowering of taxes and helping the less affluent is also one of Harris’ principle aims in leading the US, also ensuring the right to abortion and freedom of choice of women in their sexual lives. In her speech or Walz’s it was stated that Trump-appointed judges rescinded the freedom given women to choose to have a child or not, ensured by the Roe vs Wade judgment of January 23, 1973. This states: “The Supreme Court decided that the right to privacy implied in the 14th Amendment protected abortion as a fundamental right. However the government retained the power to regulate or restrict abortion access depending on the stage of pregnancy.”
On August 6, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate in the November presidential elections. There were three final contestants whom she interviewed, it was said, and she selected the Governor of the State of Minnesota. Reading about him, seeing him and his family on video and listening to his acceptance speech, one is fully convinced she’s made the best choice since he shares the issues she is passionate about, emerges as a very humane person, and as he repeatedly said, “you have to see to your neighbor.”
Additionally he is an environmentalist and very concerned about global warming and more than fair to tribal persons and Native Americans. He even considered a simple problem of girls from less well to do families and passed a state law in 2023 that girl students be given free sanitary supplies which earned him the nickname Tampon Tim. He supports LGBTQ rights and the legalization of the use of cannabis. How more wisely liberal can one get?
Personal facts: born a Catholic he changed religion to his wife’s loyalty to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Charged with drunk driving in 1995, he foreswore alcohol permanently.
Another plus point sharply in contrast to Trump and run of the mill Republicans, he is comparatively poor. He and wife have no stocks, bonds or securities, no interest paying investments. His earnings are remuneration for the political post he holds and their joint pensions as teachers. He also gets a pension from National Guards. No wonder he said in his speech on August 21, “Donald Trump’s not fighting for you or your family. He never sat at that kitchen table like the one I grew up at, wondering how we were going to pay the bills.”
Tim Walz at the end of his acceptance speech said he has not made many public speeches, but he ended on a rousing note and to describe the political struggle ahead he used football jargon – “… our job is to tackle.” Asking those present to contribute their effort, he said “one call at a time, one ten dollar donation at a time… We have 76 days to move forward. Then we will turn the page on Trump.” He assured that Kamala Harris had solutions to problems of housing, medi-care and would ensure human rights. To his resounding cry of “When we fight” the audience shouted “We win” repeatedly.
It looks as if the United States of America will be in safe hands with Harris and Walz at the helm – she a Black American with an Indian mother who she is inordinately proud of and indebted to, and he a simple man with mixed blood – German, Swedish and Irish, the last probed and identified to be that an ancestor of his came from Kilmore, a village in south County Wexford, Republic of Ireland.