Kamala Harris chooses Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota’s governor. Tim Walzas running mate for vice president if he wins the November election, CNN reported Tuesday.

Both will appear together in public for the first time this afternoon in a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvaniawhere they will kick off a tour of the country’s “hinge states” that are critical to securing the path to the White House.

Tim Walz, 60 years oldhas been governor of Minnesota since 2019, a position to which he was re-elected in 2022, and was considered the most progressive of the three eventual candidates for the position.

Harris interviewed Walz, the governor of Pennsylvania, on Sunday at his official Washington residence, the Naval Observatory, Josh Shapiro; and the senator from Arizona Mark Kelly.

Walz’s name was not in the initial betting, but he emerged strongly after several public appearances, including one in which he called his Republican rivals “weird.”

Waltz is probably the most progressive candidatelocated to the left of Harris, and could attract working-class voters in the Midwest’s rust belt, but has been criticized for delaying the deployment of the National Guard during racial protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Born in Nebraska in 1964he enlisted in the National Guard as a young man and taught school, where he met his wife, Gwen Wipple, with whom he later moved to Minnesota. In that state he was a geography teacher and high school football coach, leading his team to the 1999 state championship.

He made the leap into politics in 2006 when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota, a position to which he was re-elected several times until 2019.