Democrats and pundits trying to put a brave face on the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate have sought to emphasize his personality and his life experiences. But none points to his record in his home state, and for good reason: Minnesota has declined significantly under Tim Walz’s leadership.
Economically, Minnesota lags behind the rest of the nation, Barron’s reports: “Overall, Minnesota’s economy during Walz’s tenure has grown more slowly than that of the rest of the country.” The Center for the American Experiment adds: “Minnesota recently fell behind the country in GDP per capita for the first time in modern history.”
If anything, Minnesota should be growing faster than the rest of the country, given its proximity to the fossil fuel industry of the upper Great Plains. But Walz, like his party, has embraced the cause of “climate change.” He has followed California’s example in setting a target for “net zero emissions” (by 2050), which means wiping out the fossil fuel industry and finding solar energy in the winter. That means raising energy prices and possible future shortages — as in California.
Violent crime has risen during Walz’s tenure, despite a decrease in 2023. “Violent offenses fell across the board in 2023, but remain well above the historically low levels seen prior to the pandemic,” the Minnesota Reformer noted.
The Black Lives Matter riots played a role in 2020, when Walz notoriously delayed sending in the National Guard. But the Center for the American Experiment notes: “Minnesota’s crime rates began climbing in 2018, when Walz took office and two years before George Floyd’s death. In 2024, violent crime in Minneapolis remains 29% above 2019.
Another aspect of crime under Walz has been the massive fraud that his administration has allowed, notably in coronavirus spending. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced dozens of indictments over fraud in connection with a non-profit group called Feeding Our Future. The defendants stole $250 million from the state, claiming to be using money for meals for children, while spending on luxury goods, travel, and even foreign property.
Jim Geraghty of National Review noted that Walz failed to prevent the fraud: “[A] state legislative audit concluded that the Minnesota Department of Education was asleep at the wheel and for years had ignored red flags concerning the nonprofit.” It was not the only example of abuse on Walz’s watch: there were others, including $29 million for opioid treatments that never happened.
“It’s not just that he’s a leftist. He’s an incompetent leftist,” Geraghty concluded.
In his first speech Tuesday as Kamala Harris’s running mate, Walz claimed that his philosophy on governance was “mind your own damn business,” at least when it comes to abortion. In 2023, National Review notes, he signed laws to remove restrictions on abortion until birth — and repealed laws prohibiting coercing women into abortion. But he took a radically different approach during the coronavirus pandemic, with lockdowns and vaccination mandates.
Walz even set up a hotline encouraging neighbors to snitch on each other: “A hotline set up by Gov. Tim Walz’s administration to monitor compliance with his 2020 stay-at-home order generated thousands of reports from Minnesotans who snitched on their neighbors for things like playing basketball in a park, walking their dogs, and throwing small parties,” Alpha News reported. He tried to shut down worship in churches — until he was sued.
Minnesota is becoming known as a magnet for migration, particularly from Somalia. While most immigrants are law-abiding and hard-working, there have been problems with Islamic terror groups recruiting for jihad. The emergence of high-profile, radical leaders like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — whom Walz supported — has created an impression that at least some people in Minnesota’s new immigrant communities may have values that are incompatible with the American mainstream.
Walz has accelerated immigration by turning Minnesota into a “sanctuary state,” shielding illegal aliens from federal law enforcement. Meanwhile, as the New York Post has noted, “Walz also has signed several pieces of legislation to provide state-funded health care, driver’s licenses and free college tuition to illegal migrants.”
Democrats are touting Walz’s career as a teacher. But education has also worsened since he became governor, in spite of higher spending, according to the Center for the American Experiment.
And Walz has infused left-wing obsessions into education — including transgenderism. He put tampons in boys’ school bathrooms and signed legislation to make Minnesota a “sanctuary state” for transgender surgeries for children, just like California. Parents could lose custody of their kids if they object.
Minnesotans are voting with their feet. The state loses net residents to other states every year, and the only reason that its population grows (modestly) overall is due to foreign immigration. Weather is partly a factor, as in much of the Midwest, but so are poor “progressive” governance, and the knowledge that there are better-run states elsewhere.
The conservative PowerLine blog, reviewing his time in office, concludes that Walz is “a far-left ideologue” whose record “is every bit as bad as Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’s, possibly worse.”
No doubt Democrats would disagree. But few Americans, right or left, think of Minnesota as a model for governance. That is why Walz is largely unknown.
It is also why Democrats don’t want to talk about Minnesota. As with Kamala Harris herself, policy is the problem.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.