Doug Vose was a student in Tim Walz’s classroom many years ago. He says he votes Republican more often than Democratic. The one thing he feels strongly about is the character and authenticity of Mr. Walz.
He wrote in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
The idea that “all politics is local” has been more of a theory than a reality when it comes to presidential election cycles.
This idea, however, has taken on a new meaning for me and fellow former students of Tim Walz as news of his announcement as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate led national news cycles last week.
Of particular interest for me — and I imagine for others who’ve sat in his classrooms over the years — has been the GOP’s strategy to paint Walz as an extreme coastal liberal who, if given his way, would love to pull the country into communism.
(Chuckle.)
As a 30-something who’s voted for the other guys more often than Walz’s party, I might have a unique POV on presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign painting Walz this way.
We all remember where we were on Sept. 11, 2001. I happened to be in U.S. history class at Mankato West High School when Walz poked his head in.
“They’ve just hit the Pentagon,” he said, turning to the TV in the corner of the classroom.
“Pay attention,” he told us. “You’re watching history, and your generation is going to remember this day forever.”
And of course, we did.
In the days and weeks that followed, Walz helped students of all kinds cope with their feelings about that horrible day. Students, faculty and friends gravitated to Walz to crystalize their feelings of fear, anger, hostility and sadness. After all, Mr. Walz was an Army National Guard officer, understood the minutiae of global geopolitics, but more than anything — he was a good man.
Tim and Gwen Walz were our faculty advisers for the Mankato West High School newspaper that fall, and in the wake of 9/11 the students on staff quickly pivoted to a big presentation outlining the pros and cons of retaliation in the Middle East for our next edition. A microcosm of our nation in those few weeks, the classroom was full of strong and often divided feelings. What would we say, and how would we say it?
Walz jumped in as he almost always did with student groups — from newspaper to yearbook to the burgeoning Gay-Straight Alliance that we’ve heard so much about in recent days. He challenged students to develop an informed point of view, to consider the value of empathy and to prescribe a path forward for our generation.
These were tough topics for everyone, and “Mr. Walz” served as our conscience.
In those days before his political career launched, it was very difficult for us to ascertain his political leanings. We knew he served at home and abroad in the Army National Guard. We knew he was a gun owner and perhaps the best shot of anyone we knew. We also knew that he was tremendously passionate about equal rights for everyone.
The idea that he’s a coastal liberal was as laughable then as it is now.
Since Walz has been in the governor’s office here in Minnesota, he has continued to stick to his principled approach.
He has been quite fairly criticized for Minnesota’s continued high state income taxes relative to our neighbors. Following widespread riots and looting in 2020, crime became a central issue for Minnesotans entering the 2022 gubernatorial election.
True to his history, though, Walz did not apologize for his convictions or his policies. He told Minnesotans if you don’t like sub-2% unemployment rates, if you don’t want to support a woman’s right to choose, and if you don’t like the way he commanded the National Guard during those fraught days in 2020, go ahead and vote for the other guy.
Walz won by almost 8 percentage points.
So, don’t be fooled by the easy smile and cheesy Dad jokes. When the chips are down and things get hard, this guy sticks to his convictions.
He doesn’t move his support to whichever group yells his name the loudest. He doesn’t take the politically easy route. He actually believes the things that are coming out of his mouth, whether you agree with him or not. When he’s not on TV talking, he is working to make his policies reality.
Walz digs in.
It’s the reason why for years students sought his counsel about hard things when he was a teacher at Mankato West; it’s why he was able to turn the First Congressional District blue for a decade, and it’s why he ran successfully to the right of a DFL-endorsed candidate to win the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018.
Memo to the Trump 2024 team from a dormant Republican and a Mr. Walz student:
Make the campaign about the Trump tax policy. Make it about China. Make it about the border.
Make it about anything other than leadership, decency and competency.
Because if you don’t, and this becomes a character debate, you’re way out of your league.
Doug Vose is a 2004 graduate of Mankato West High School and has been a software sales executive in the private sector for more than 15 years. He lives in Eden Prairie.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“In those days before his political career launched, it was very difficult for us to ascertain his political leanings.”
Walz like most teachers I’ve known presented information and promoted thoughtful discussion. He did not “indoctrinate” students into the wonders of socialism. Walz must have had to demonstrate tremendous restraint to keep from saying anything about the disastrous war in Iraq. Walz has principles, and he knows how to conduct himself.
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https://purpleusa.substack.com/p/why-tim-walz-as-vp-isinteresting
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Here are 20 things to know about Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for Vice President:
Walz grew up in the small town of Butte, Nebraska, population 400, where his high school graduation class was just 24. “There are real stories in small towns,” he says. He is one of those stories.
Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was 17 and served for 24 years, rising to the rank of Sergeant Major before retiring from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005 so he could run for Congress. Joe Eustice, who served in the Guard with Walz for years, says that although he disagrees with Walz politically, Walz did not avoid combat duty and was a good soldier. Walz retired A FULL YEAR BEFORE his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. In contrast, in order to keep Donald Trump out of military service his father, Fred Trump, got one of his renters, a storefront podiatrist, to say that Donald had “bone spurs” on the heels of his feet that made him unfit for military service, even though Trump was active in basketball and baseball in college. Neither Donald nor his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, ever wore our country’s uniform. Trump’s VP running mate, JD Vance, used his elite Yale University connections to land a military assignment safely behind combat lines in public relations.
Walz’s father died of lung cancer when he was 19. Walz strongly supports lower-cost health care for everyone because “The last week of my dad’s life cost my mom a decade of work to pay off the hospital bill.”
Walz graduated from Chadron State College in 1989 and earned a Master of Science degree from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2001.
Walz met his future wife, Gwen Whipple, a native Minnesotan, while they were both high school teachers in temporary classrooms. Gwen says that he caught her attention because his loud voice disrupted her next door class through the room’s flimsy walls.
After marrying, they moved to Mankato, Minnesota, where they both taught at Mankato West High School and he taught geography and coached high school football. Asked about his baldness, Walz answered that he “supervised the lunchroom for 20 years — and you do not leave that job with a full head of hair. Trust me.”
The Walz’s have two children, Hope and Gus. Hope recently graduated from college in Montana, and Gus is in public high school in St. Paul.
Both of their children were conceived through IVF and fertility treatments: “There’s a reason we named our daughter Hope,” he notes.
The people of Minnesota first elected Walz to Congress in 2006, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in the U.S. House.
Walz was re-elected to Congress five times by the voters in southern Minnesota’s rural, conservative 1st District, and he served in the House for 12 years.
He became the ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in 2017 and focused on issues such as veterans’ mental health, suicide and pain management. He also called for funding to research medical cannabis treatment for veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain.
At one time Walz had an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association and the group’s endorsement. In 2016, Guns & Ammo magazine included him on its list of top 20 politicians for gun owners. But Walz lost his rating because he supports bans on assault rifles and other such weapons.
Walz remains an avid hunter and scoffs at JD Vance for talking about guns saying: “I guarantee you he can’t shoot pheasants like I can.”
In 2019, Walz ran for governor of Minnesota and defeated Republican candidate Jeff Johnson by more than 11 points.
Walz frequently defends his policies, such as the universal school meals bill signed into Minnesota law earlier this year, as being simply common sense: “Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own healthcare decisions.”
Thirty years ago after getting DWI in Nebraska, he quit drinking. His favorite drink these days is Mountain Dew.
Walz is a runner, who has participated in multiple running competitions in Minnesota’s Twin Cities: “I’ve found that before the most stressful political events, if I’ve gone for a run, I’m calmer and more collected.”
He likes to tinker on his vintage blue International Scout, a four-wheel-drive vehicle that International Harvester stopped producing in 1980.
Walz’s favorite song is “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan, one of Minnesota’s most famous celebrities. Walz views the song as a “timeless message from a dad to his son.”
“We don’t have the Ten Commandments posted in our classrooms — but we do give hungry kids free breakfast and lunch.” — Tim Walz
Click on the link and sing and laugh along!!!😂
(Feel free to copy and pass this info along.)
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Since Republicans for decades have worked hard to turn “liberal” into an insulting word, a dirty, dangerous ideology, I think a reminder of who liberals really are is called for.
“Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.”
Liberals are also not the boogie man threat to freedom Republicans paint them to be. Liberals re the smallest faction when compared to moderates and conservatives. Slightly less than half of registered Democrats consider themselves liberals.
“In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify as conservative or very conservative, 38% identify as moderate, and 47% identify as liberal or very liberal.”
Wait, I’m not done. I want to compare the other option that Republican Party has become under Traitor Trump’s leadership.
Traitor Trump’s most rabid supporters are Christian Nationalists who also helped write Trump’s Project 2025, the plan to take over the US so “no one has to ever vote again.” — source of quoted phrase is from Traitor Trump’s mouth, one of the few times he took a break from lying.
“Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future. Scholars like Samuel Huntington have made a similar argument: that America is defined by its ‘Anglo-Protestant’ past and that we will lose our identity and our freedom if we do not preserve our cultural inheritance.”
What Is Christian Nationalism? | Christianity Today
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What a wonderful article. I hope that someday my former students can say the same about my classroom.
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