Kamala picks the ‘Minnesota Nice’ guy

It’s not hard to recognize the sunny optimism that embodies the phrase, “Minnesota Nice.” You must be able to survive in a state where the land-locked upper Midwest weather vacillates between the stiflingly humid ninety-degree summers and dark, subzero winters. It’s those slivers of perfection between each season that make living here worthwhile; people flock to lakes with Native American names like Winnibigoshish and Minnetonka, whose purifying waters were made famous by Minnesota’s favorite native son, Prince. Our professional sports teams suffer from record-setting championship droughts, yet the fan base is never deterred. We boast about the state cuisine being dependent on canned soup and tater-tots (hotdish) and jellied, lye-rehydrated whitefish (the endangered species known as Lutefisk).

The key to enjoying Minnesota life — the weather, the sports or the food — and maintaining that perpetual optimism is not thinking about it too much. And that’s where Governor Tim Walz comes in.

Walz sells himself as the “aw, shucks” guy. He has the look and feel of an average Minnesotan, outfitted in a plaid flannel shirt and a wide smile. Heck, if he claimed to be the human cousin of Paul Bunyan, we might believe him. Walz also seems to do the work bridging the gap between the working class and rural greater Minnesota with his demeanor and background — and the elitist urban core Twin Cities with his policies and progressive politics.

He’s a long-time union guy, not just because of his teaching background. Like the late Senator Paul Wellstone, he has working-class white guy vibes, which appeals to trade union members who might be apprehensive about voting for a woman who looks goofy in a hard hat. He sent out relief checks to essential workers like nurses and grocery clerks who kept the state (sort of) running during the Covid-19 pandemic. He served in both the Nebraska and Minnesota National Guard. He was a high-school football coach. He’s often seen motoring around in his vintage 1979 International Harvester Scout II, the kind of personal tidbits that endear him to an average Minnesotan. He seems to be one of them — just don’t think about it too hard.

And maybe that’s what the Harris campaign saw in Walz — if they didn’t think about it too hard. But part of being “Minnesota Nice” — besides forging it through the aforementioned suffering — is having a healthy dose of standoffishness and hardheadedness. That’s the Minnesota variety of folksiness that makes us good neighbors. So, even though Walz looks the part of an average deer hunter who never misses an official fishing opener (spoiler alert: he does), he doesn’t fool the real farmers and residents outside the urban core.

Back in 2017, Walz made an appeal to the pretentious city-dwellers who perpetually look down on the country bumpkins whose relatives likely settled here in the nineteenth century and have since been sacrificed by Walz and his colleagues in the state legislature in the name of racial reckoning that started with the death of George Floyd in 2020 and continues with the recent redesign of the Minnesota state flag.

“Red and blue and there’s all that red across there. And Democrats go into depression over it. It’s mostly rocks and cows that are in that red area,” Walz told the Minneapolis audience, referring to the state’s electoral county map. Fast-forward to the race for governor in 2022, and Walz seems vindicated in his remarks, with the disparaged country folk not forgetting his attitude, but neither did the urban elites. Walz was defeated in nearly every county outside the Twin Cities, Duluth and Rochester — the state’s city centers. But very blue, very urban Minneapolis/St. Paul’s core was all that mattered in the election.

So how does Walz push through a progressive agenda and still carry on the facade of “One Minnesota?” He takes advantage of our Minnesota Nice disposition and shames us into compliance: speaking about the state’s racial inequities by appealing to white guilt, how any condition on abortion is a war against women or how opposition to gender-affirming surgery is an attack on kids. Who wants to be seen as a racist, woman-hating kid denier as long as you don’t think about the real consequences too hard? And if there is any state that wants to be seen as the “good little student” to Walz’s blowhard, scolding teacher, it’s Minnesota.

Why did Kamala Harris pick Walz? Those of us who live here have little doubt Minnesota would end up in the Democrat column electorally come November, despite some polling data and the perpetually sunny optimism of the state’s flailing Republican opposition (“There’s always next year!” isn’t a tagline reserved for Minnesota’s sports fans).

My guess is Harris picked Walz partly based on feelings, perhaps an optimistic disposition that Walz mirrors the same Regular Guy authenticity that won Joe Biden the presidency. They both claim an appeal to the working class yet are politicians at their core. They’re blowhards of the first order. And both oversaw some of the worst, most viscerally destructive events in recent years: the rioting and burning of Minneapolis in 2020 and the blundered Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.

So, Walz makes a decent choice for vice president on a surface-level, non-threatening everyman, Minnesota Nice, passive-aggressive way. But only if you don’t think about it too hard.