2024 in politics: Gov. Tim Walz’s rise to the national stage and the VP nomination

NINA MOINI: We're spending the rest of today's show looking back at some of the biggest moments of this year and looking ahead to what 2025 might bring. Joining me from our Duluth studio is MPR News Politics Editor Brian Bakst. Thanks for being here, Brian. We didn't catch you on vacation, did we? [LAUGHS]

BRIAN BAKST: A little bit, Nina, but I'm glad to be here.

NINA MOINI: There wasn't a lot of vacation for Brian Bakst this year. So we're looking back at this session. Of course, it was a presidential election year, as well. And in Minnesota, all 134 Minnesota House seats were on the ballot-- busy, busy. Republicans flipped some seats, now leading to this divided legislature that's still a bit in limbo. So we'll look ahead at what's next for the session.

And the biggest political story of the year was Governor Tim Walz, his rise to become the vice presidential nominee alongside Vice President Kamala Harris. That's a lot, Brian. [LAUGHS]

BRIAN BAKST: It sure is.

NINA MOINI: But before we get into it, I just wanted to say in all seriousness that you and your team-- Dana Ferguson, Mark Zdechlik, Ellie Roth, Matt Alvarez, Clay Masters-- did amazing work this year. I often saw you scurrying and running around the newsroom, very busy. But it was a lot. But there's still a lot more to come. I'm curious about your initial reflections on just this last year.

BRIAN BAKST: Well, thank you for those words. I mean, you know how we drop a lot of these plans. We had to toss a lot of plans and draw up new ones. From the really rocky legislative session earlier in the spring to the unpredictable election to just these developments of the past few days, I mean, it's just been a lot of unexpected things that we've had to keep our eye on.

And we've had a team who's been willing to go anywhere. Mark Zdechlik was in Chicago, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, DC. I might be missing some things.

NINA MOINI: [LAUGHS]

BRIAN BAKST: Clay Masters-- Chicago, Wisconsin-- he was there often. And Dana off with Governor Walz to Michigan and Pennsylvania and some other places. And we're still kind of in high gear because now the legislative session is just right around the corner.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. And speaking of Governor Walz, the day-- it was the day after President Joe Biden dropped out, if people remember-- it wasn't that long ago, but a lot's happened. And Governor Walz actually joined this program and broke the news to Minnesotans that he would consider joining a presidential ticket. Let's take a listen back.

TIM WALZ: She mentioned she would need my help, and I said she has it in any way that she sees fit. If that's the direction she goes, I guess that's fine.

NINA MOINI: He's sounding pretty chill there, but it ended up being more than just fine. This was, again, July 22. And then, 15 days later, August 6, he was tapped to be the VP nominee. And Brian, I remember in the newsroom we sort of thought he's an underdog, I don't think he has a great chance. But remind us what ended up pushing him to the top.

BRIAN BAKST: Yeah, it wasn't just one thing. It was a combination of factors. He was the Upper Midwest, where there were two key battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan. He's a two-term governor who served 12 years in Congress, so he knows his way around Washington and an executive role.

His biography helped him. He was a former teacher, a high school coach, a gun owner, a military veteran, and someone who's always been more or less middle class. And he wound up auditioning well on cable TV and other interviews, where he tried to succinctly draw differences between his party's philosophy and vision and that of Republicans.

Nina, Walz's national profile really shot up after he used the term "weird" for the first time on MSNBC's Morning Joe program to describe the opposition.

TIM WALZ: I think this is going back to the bread and butter, getting away from this division. We do not like what has happened where we can't even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our uncle, because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: [LAUGHS]

TIM WALZ: And I think bringing back people together-- well, it's true, these guys--

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It is.

TIM WALZ: --are just weird. And--

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It is. [LAUGHS]

TIM WALZ: They're running for He-Man Woman-Hater's Club or something. That's what they go at. That's not what people are interested in.

BRIAN BAKST: He was using that to describe JD Vance, who was the vice presidential nominee, and former President Donald Trump. And that "weird" label, it was picked up by the Harris campaign and other Democrats. And for a while, it was kind of their rallying cry.

NINA MOINI: It was everywhere. And then he was off on the campaign trail, the shortest general election presidential campaign in history. They had 107 days. Let's listen back again to what he was up to.

[CROWD CHEERING]

KAMALA HARRIS: To his former high school students, he was Mr. Walz.

[CROWD CHEERING]

And to his former high school football players, he was Coach.

[CROWD CHEERING]

And in 91 days, the nation will know Coach Walz by another name-- Vice President of the United States.

[CROWD CHANTING]

TIM WALZ: It's the fourth quarter. We're down a field goal. But we're on offense, and we've got the ball. We're driving down the field. But you've heard me say it, and I know it's a Wisconsin rule. I claimed it for Minnesota, but I know you've got it here, too. The golden rule that makes everything work better is mind your own damn business.

[CROWD CHEERING]

Mind your own damn business. You in Pennsylvania know it. Under Trump, you lost 275,000 jobs in this state alone as he mismanaged COVID and put people's lives at risk.

When Kamala and I talk about freedom-- freedom for the people, not politicians, to make your own decisions about your own life. And I say this as a dad and a teacher and as a governor-- free to send your kids to school without them being shot dead in the halls.

[CROWD CHEERING]

And I'll take no crap on this. I know guns. I'm a veteran. I'm a hunter. Kamala and I are both gun owners.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

We need to whip his butt and put this guy behind us. That's what we need to do.

[CROWD CHEERING]

That's why I tell you that. I know you want this, too. I want to wake up when this guy is not on the national stage. We don't get tired, because we know there's plenty of time to sleep when you're dead. And we--

[CROWD CHEERING]

We believe in the promise of America. We just have to fight for it.

[CROWD CHEERING]

Here's the deal, folks. There's going to be a day you're going to be sitting in that rocking chair. And you're going to be rocking on that porch, and a little one's going to come home from school and ask, what did you do in the 2024 election where the American experiment survived, where the rule of law survived, where decency survived? And you're going to be able to answer, every damn thing I could-- every damn thing I could. So Detroit, it's time. And as the vice president says, when we vote--

CROWD: We win.

TIM WALZ: Michigan, bring this thing home for America. Let's go. Let's go.

[CLAPPING]

[CROWD CHEERING]

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

It's hard. It's hard to lose. It's hard to understand why so many of our fellow citizens, people that we have fought so long and hard for, wound up choosing the other path. It's hard to reckon with what that path looks like over the next four years.

NINA MOINI: A definite arc there. And we know, of course, that Donald Trump did win the election. Walz is now back at the state capitol through 2026. And we've also sat down with him to reflect on the campaign, right, Brian?

BRIAN BAKST: We have. And certainly a lot has changed for him. He went from being on the doorstep of the vice presidency to returning to a state capitol where the political ground has shifted beneath him. Depending on how few things shake out, he appears to have a Republican House to deal with, at least at the outset, and a much tighter budget than before.

But he hasn't completely left the campaign behind him, like many in his party. He's still trying to pin down where things went wrong for Democrats. So he can help the party rebound. He talked to Dana Ferguson just a couple of weeks ago during a wide-ranging interview, and here's what he had to say.

TIM WALZ: We've got to figure it out. And I feel like one of my roles is, going forward here, is figuring out a way to make the case to the public, the American public is that the Democratic Party really is focused on the things they care about. And in this case, they didn't-- they thought-- and it might be true-- not enough focus was put on inflation and the costs that those brought to people, understanding that immigration and border control does matter to people. And it doesn't mean that you're cruel or you don't care.

And I think that's something that in the 90 days I was out there, we apparently didn't make that connection strongly enough, because it was middle class folks in a lot of cases. It was folks that were less than a college degree. These are folks that are working dang hard.

I've always said that the hardest jobs I've ever did paid me the least amount of money. So there were folks that weren't voting for us would be the very folks that I care that our policies impact. And that disconnect was obvious in the results.

NINA MOINI: And Brian, like you mentioned, Walz had been working the last two years with the Minnesota House and Senate that were both in DFL control. Now he's going to be working in a divided legislature. So how is he going to navigate that landscape?

BRIAN BAKST: Yeah, it's a different kind of pressure. The past two years, he's pushed hard by his party, particularly the left flank, to go as far as they could to adopt progressive policies. Now he's going to, naturally, be tacking back to the middle. He has no choice. The narrow Senate majority includes several lawmakers who have rebranded themselves as blue dog Democrats. They say they won't agree to new taxes.

The House won't be going there either, with Republicans having a seat at the bargaining table. And so Walz ran as a moderate Democrat in 2018 and governed on a more centrist posture in his first term. I expect to see he'll reprise that at least some.

NINA MOINI: Thank you, Brian. And you're going to stick with us. We'll be talking about how the election panned out for the rest of the state and the state legislature in just a bit.