Governor Walz with students at Webster Elementary School in Minneapolis last year.
Photo: Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune/Getty Images
Since Tim Walz entered the race to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice presidential candidate, a certain photo has been popping up everywhere. It shows a smiling Walz being hugged by happy children. The photo marked an important occasion: In March 2023, the governor of Minnesota had just signed a law guaranteeing free breakfasts and lunches in public schools. The majority of Republican lawmakers opposed the law, with some arguing that the universal program would benefit the rich and increase spending too much. Although spending did indeed increase, it was for a good cause: feeding hungry children. Compared to the same period last year, the number of school breakfasts served increased by 30 percent and lunches by 11 percent. Specifically, the state provided millions of meals to children who needed them.
The free meals program not only provides for children who need to eat, but also reduces the stigma of poverty, as the Minnesota Reformer pointed out in a January article. Reduced-price or free school meals can sometimes look different than full-price meals and essentially disadvantage children whose families need extra help. Because this program is universal, it takes the burden off families who earned too much to qualify but still struggle to feed everyone. While the right may call this socialist, it is also an example of providing for the common good and may help explain why so many progressives celebrated when Walz switched to the Harris ticket.
“Being from the Midwest, I know a little about caring for people,” Walz said recently in a speech in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. “My mother and father taught me to be generous to my neighbors and to work for the common good.” His career shows how that belief plays out in practice. In Congress, he supported the Affordable Care Act, and as governor he supports a public option for health insurance; he has also called health care “a basic human right.”
The governor’s commitment to the common good extends to reproductive rights, LGBT rights and gun control. He supported marriage equality years before Barack Obama, is open about his family’s experience with IVF and donated campaign contributions to the NRA after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre. Some critics might argue that makes him vulnerable to attacks from the right. Conservatives have attacked him for being a socialist — a statement that doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, even though the label doesn’t apply. “How are you going to build a water treatment plant in a town of 400 people if you don’t work together to do it?” he told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki in July. “You scream socialism, we’re just building roads.” It’s an effective way to defuse the right’s usual communist-baiting. The Trump campaign will label Walz and Harris communists no matter what policies they support. So far, however, Walz has defended his vision of the common good without swinging to the left – which is a refreshing change from the usual practice of the Democratic Party.
As Vox reported earlier this month, Walz has been praised by both Sen. Joe Manchin and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No politician can please everyone; eventually, he’s going to disappoint someone. There are plenty of indications that Walz isn’t as far left as some progressives would like. He doesn’t seem to support a universal health care system like Medicare for All, as Harris once did before she backed down, and he hasn’t backed activists’ calls for an arms embargo on Israel. But the left is used to pressuring Democratic politicians, and Walz may be a friendlier target than usual. There’s his track record, of course, but also his normal demeanor; he’s a former public school teacher and union member, attended public universities, and isn’t rich. While those qualities alone aren’t proof that Walz could take pressure, the left’s hopes aren’t misplaced, either.
Much depends on the policy proposals of the Harris-Walz slate; an economic plan is reportedly scheduled to be unveiled Friday. If campaign strategists are smart, they will build on current momentum by combining good vibes with sensible policies. They should know by now that they don’t have to swing right to win the election. In Walz, Harris has a partner who knows how to defend liberalism without apology, and that is far superior to the defensive posture Democrats usually take, even if it falls short of what the left really wants. As Trump and JD Vance slide ever deeper into self-indulgent bigotry and chaos, Harris and Walz should offer voters a clear alternative. She often speaks of freedom on the campaign trail, and none of us are truly free under leaders who don’t protect the common good. Without strong unions or reproductive rights or sensible gun control, we are vulnerable – to capitalist greed, to forced pregnancies and births, to violence. No one is expecting a revolutionary Democratic vice president, and it’s unclear how much influence Walz would actually have in a Harris White House. Still, his emphasis on collective power and the common good could move the country forward, not back. That’s progress.
