Jim Hartman
Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, the favorite of progressives. Harris reinforced her leftist base rather than reaching out to swing voters.
In picking Walz, Harris doubled-down on her biggest problem – being too far left. Donald Trump made the same mistake, doubling down on his base with the choice of J.D. Vance.
Walz is an unapologetic left-liberal whose views and actions won the enthusiastic support of Bernie Sanders.
First elected to Congress as a moderate in 2006, Walz served 12 years in the House.
Walz moved sharply left after becoming governor in 2019. Since 2023, when Democrats gained full control of the state legislature, he’s governed much like California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
His governing record will be an inviting target for Republicans.
On illegal immigrants, he’s signed bills granting them eligibility for driver’s licenses along with taxpayer-funded health insurance and free college tuition. He also is a strong supporter of sanctuary cities.
Walz increased income taxes, though Minnesota already has the fifth-highest top income tax rate and highest corporate tax (9.8%) among the states. That’s one reason Minnesota is losing residents to other states.
He also proposed raising the gas tax by a staggering 70%.
Walz declared Minnesota to be a “trans refuge” for children from other states and signed an order allowing minors to undergo sex-reassignment surgery.
Another issue is how Walz handled – or mishandled – the riots in Minneapolis that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd. Walz acknowledged the response was an “abject failure.”
The riots inflicted $500 million in damage to the Twin Cities, the second-costliest rioting in U.S. history (only the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles were worse).
Walz dithered in mobilizing the National Guard.
It took him three days to deploy the 600 troops requested by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. His “failure to act” resulted in the burning to the ground of more than 1,000 businesses and a police station, a scathing state Senate report determined.
Harris made her own news in the aftermath of the looting and arson, tweeting a fundraising request for a bail fund for the arrested lawbreakers.
As a California senator, Harris’s record includes support for defunding the police, including then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s plan to slash $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget. She repeatedly called to “reimagine” the role of police.
As California’s attorney general, Harris wrote the 2014 ballot summary for Proposition 47 that had a devastating impact on crime in the state.
Proposition 47, the horribly mistitled “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” infamously made theft up to $950 a misdemeanor and enabled criminals not to fear the consequences for their actions.
In the aftermath of its passage, Harris was criticized for her summary that left out critical information and failed to provide voters full disclosure about the initiative.
Today, the impacts of Prop 47 are more prevalent than ever, with smash and grabs and rampant thefts regularly reported. It’s so bad that more than 900,000 California voters helped qualify a new ballot initiative for this November’s ballot to clean up the Prop 47 mess.
As San Francisco district attorney, Harris refused to seek the death penalty against a gang member who murdered a police officer, Isaac Espinoza, despite pressure from fellow Democrats to do so, including from the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Dubbed Biden’s “border czar,” Harris allowed millions of illegal crossings into our country as the border sat wide open. As district attorney, she supported San Francisco’s sanctuary city status. As senator, she advocated “starting from scratch” with Immigration and Custom Enforcement saying we should “reexamine” ICE.
The Democratic ticket joins Walz, one of the most liberal governors in the country, with Harris, one of the most liberal (former) senators. Both have far-left governing records.
E-mail Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.