Tim Walz says Kamala Harris picked him as running mate ‘to talk to white guys’

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who ran as Kamala Harris’s vice presidential nominee on the losing Democratic ticket in last year’s election, has said the former vice president picked him because he could “talk to white guys.”

Speaking at a Harvard Kennedy School forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this week, Walz said the campaign had identified appealing to white working class males as a weakness of their candidate and had looked to him to bridge the divide.

The governor said he was chosen ahead of the likes of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly because he could put white, rural voters “at ease” and provide “permission” for them to vote for Harris.

“I... was on the ticket, quite honestly, because I could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck, doing that, then I could put them at ease,” he said.

“I was the permission structure to say you can do this and vote for this, and you look across those swing states, with the exception of Minnesota, we didn’t get enough of those votes.”

The Harris-Walz ticket ultimately won just 38 percent of the vote in its problem demographic, compared to 60 percent for Donald Trump and JD Vance, according to an NBC News election night exit poll, despite the campaign making much of Walz’s blue collar credentials and folksy appeal as a high school football coach and keen hunter.

Asked what he would have done differently if he had his time again, Walz answered simply: “We would have won.”

Walz was quizzed at the event about whether he planned to run for the presidency himself in 2028 but said he was not thinking about that at present and advised his party to focus on its local campaigning infrastructure instead to ensure a better outcome next time around.

The governor told The Washington Post in April that he believed the Democratic mission to stop Trump floundered because it failed to reach Latino voters, did not do enough to acknowledge voters’ anger about the war in Gaza and did not have a sufficiently agile media strategy.

And during an appearance on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s podcast in March, he said he believed he became a focal point for the Trump-Vance campaign’s attacks because they were “scared” of his masculinity.

“I think I scare them a little bit, [which is] why they spend so much time on me,” he said, adding that he was “serious” because, unlike his Republican rivals, “I can fix a truck, they know I’m not bulls***ing on this.”

Both Walz and Newsom, as well as their fellow state governors Gretchen Whitmer and JB Prtizker and progressive representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have all been tipped as future Democratic presidential nominees.