Kamala Harris didn’t have a whole lot of time to get to know Tim Walz before asking him to join her on the Democrats’ 2024 presidential ticket. The pair met for an in-person interview over the weekend, but Harris also had at least one recent experience with the Minnesota governor to draw on as she mulled her choice.
In March, Walz was at Harris’ side during one of the most important moments in her tenure as vice president: a tour of St. Paul’s Planned Parenthood health center — the first visit a sitting VP has ever made to a clinic that provides abortion care.
In the wake of the Dobbs decision, Harris emerged as the Biden administration’s strongest messenger on reproductive rights — in stark contrast to the Catholic president who opposed abortion for much of his career, and struggled to even utter the word itself. In that role, Harris toured the country, raising awareness about the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision, and speaking to women and health care providers in states where abortion access had dried up or disappeared entirely.
“I have heard stories of — and have met with women who had miscarriages in toilets,” Harris said in March. “Women who were being denied emergency care because the health care providers there, at an emergency room, were afraid that because of the laws in their state, that they could be criminalized, sent to prison for providing health care.”
But she was in St. Paul that day with a different agenda, she said: to demonstrate the positive case for what reproductive policy could look like in America.
“I’m here at this health care clinic to uplift the work that is happening in Minnesota as an example of what true leadership looks like, which is to understand it is only right and fair that people have access to the health care they need and that they have access to health care in an environment where they are treated with dignity and respect,” Harris said.
Walz, the person responsible for that work, was standing behind her. After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ended federal protections for abortion rights, Walz became the first governor in the country to sign new legislation enshrining the right to abortion into law.
“The message that we’re sending to Minnesota today is very clear: Your rights are protected in this state,” Walz said in January 2023. “You have the right to make your own decisions about your health, your family and your life.”
Last year, Walz also signed legislation that expanded health insurance coverage for abortion, increased funding for reproductive health organizations, and eliminated a mandatory 24-hour waiting period, parental consent rules and other barriers to care.
In June of this year, when Iowa passed a six-week ban on abortion, Walz reminded Iowans of his state’s commitment to maintaining access. “To our neighbors in Iowa: Minnesota is and will remain a safe haven for reproductive freedom,” he wrote on X.
Walz has long been a champion for reproductive rights since he ran for office the very first time in 2006 — in a rural congressional district that had elected precisely one other Democrat since 1892. On a candidate questionnaire he filled out that year, Walz indicated his belief that abortion “should always be legal.”
His opponent in that first Congressional race, a six-term incumbent, had voted for a law banning many abortions later in pregnancy. Walz said at the time he opposed that bill “because we know when you start to criminalize it, that has nothing to do with reduction of abortions.”
Walz won that race, and went on to serve six terms in the House, earning 100 percent voting scores from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, before launching a campaign for Minnesota governor. Campaigning in that race, Walz declared proudly: “My record is so pro-choice Nancy Pelosi asked if I should tone it down. I stand with Planned Parenthood!”
Introducing Walz to supporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Harris cited Walz’s work as champion for reproductive freedom, and declared a commitment to protecting that freedom would be central to the Harris-Walz campaign.
“Tim and I have a message for Trump and others who want to turn back the clock on our fundamental freedoms: We’re not going back,” she said, igniting a chant that reverberated around the stadium. “We’re not going back.”
Walz used the opportunity, as he was introduced to the world that night, to talk about his family’s experience with in vitro fertilization — another type of reproductive care that Republicans have been targeting.
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make, even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves. There’s a golden rule: mind your own damn business… that includes IVF,” Walz said.
He went on to speak about the years of agonizing fertility treatments. “I remember praying every night for a call for good news, the pit in my stomach when the phone rang, and the agony when we heard that the treatments hadn’t worked,” Walz said. “It wasn’t by chance that when we welcomed our daughter into the world, we named her Hope.”
Aug. 9, 9 a.m.: This post has been updated to include a video from Walz’s 2018 campaign for governor.
