The inside story of how Harris chose Walz

Vice President Kamala Harris had just 16 days to pick someone she could be linked to forever. She ended up going with one of the options that she — and the rest of the world — knew the least.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was a dark horse from the start, left off early lists of potential running mates. But no one used the 16 days since President Joe Biden stepped aside more effectively than Walz, who charmed Harris and national Democrats alike with a Diet Mountain Dew-fueled media tour that labeled the opposition as “weird” and won him a spot in history.

The choice will leave an indelible imprint on the image of Harris that is still forming for many Americans, who know her far less than they do Biden or former President Donald Trump, raising the stakes of a choice that can be difficult in the best of times, let alone under unprecedented time pressure.

In Walz, a gun-owning hunter who enlisted in the Army National Guard at 17, Harris sees a loyal governing partner who complements her background. The governor does not typically use a teleprompter, so had to practice with one Tuesday before his big speech at his debut rally in Philadelphia.

Harris did not know any of the candidates very well just three weeks ago. But after she whittled down her final list to Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and held in-person interviews with them Sunday, Harris concluded she had the best personal rapport with Walz and was convinced that he would have her back and not let his personal ambitions get in the way.

“You also have to ask yourself at some point: Is this someone you would want to have lunch with every week for four years?” a White House official said.

Ultimately, people close to Harris say, it came down to trusting her “gut,” with an aide comparing it to finding a husband. No one was perfect, but Walz was seen as the best.

The pick stunned many Democrats, including some top party donors, who were unfamiliar with the sleeper candidate.

“Once they read about him, they were impressed,” said Harris campaign national finance chair Chris Korge, who started fielding calls the moment the news broke. “I got a ton of calls today and not one of them negative. They loved how relatable he was.”

Now, Harris is betting that Walz’s Midwestern dad charm will win over America like it won over her team.

This is the inside story of how Harris got to Walz, based on interviews with more than a dozen Democrats, several of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about what happened behind the scenes.

A ticking clock 

Harris’ advisers did not wait for Biden to step aside.

With a looming deadline that Democrats concluded they had to meet to finalize their nominee, people close to Harris and outside allies began a few days before his announcement to start thinking about what her campaign might look like and started batting around names of potential running mates at daily meetings.

Almost immediately after Biden dropped out, her team concluded that it most likely had to be a middle-aged white man, for many of the reasons Barack Obama chose Biden as his running mate.

It’s not “rocket science,” said a person familiar with the Harris campaign’s thinking. “Let’s just face it. There’s a lot of sexist, racist white dudes out there in America who don’t like Trump but just need a little extra validation.”

They needed “someone who gives moderate Republican voters a place to go,” said another person familiar with the process. “The Nikki Haley voters that are like, ‘God, JD Vance is terrifying and Trump is horrifying, but I wasn’t really sure that Biden could do the job, and I’m not sure that she can do the job.’”

Nine names were initially selected to enter the vetting process, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder and former White House counsel Dana Remus.

By last Thursday, Holder and Remus had compiled their findings for a meeting Friday with a panel of trusted confidants who conducted the first interviews. They included Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and former Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a top Biden adviser who has remained on the Harris campaign.

By Saturday, the team had whittled the list down to three names — Walz, Shapiro and Kelly — who were told to prepare for face-to-face meetings with Harris.

On Sunday, the black SUVs with out-of-state plates slipped through the gates of the Washington Naval Observatory, home to the vice president’s residence, on their way to the most important meeting of their occupants’ lives.

Walz left his meeting feeling confident. Shapiro did not.

“He wrestled with it Sunday,” said a person close to Shapiro, because he “loves his job” and, only two years in, has more he wants to do. “[He’s] all in for her, no matter where he sits,” the source added.

By the end of the weekend, Harris had been speaking so much with candidates and advisers that her voice was growing hoarse, and she took to carrying throat lozenges to the nonstop meetings.

Meanwhile, beyond the black iron fence of the observatory, the apparatus to support the eventual running mate began to whir to life.

Former Biden State Department official Liz Allen was tapped to be the eventual running mate’s chief of staff, while “jump teams” were dispatched to the finalists in case they were chosen. Staffers at the campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, began preparing graphics, videos, talking points and even stump speeches for each of the finalists.

Aides tried to buy Harris as much time as possible, printing signs with different potential candidates and even changing party rules — ironically via a party committee Walz chaired — so she could make her pick after the party formally nominated her.

“People were like it was ‘The Bachelor’ playing out in real time,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., joked outside a polling place Tuesday.

Candidates who have gone through vetting processes in previous years describe it as a grueling and uncomfortable process that more than one have compared to a proctology exam.

There are exhaustive questionnaires about the candidates’ legal, financial, political, personal, family and employment backgrounds, followed by hourslong interviews known as  “murder boards” at which dirty laundry is aired and hypothetical scenarios are presented to see how the candidates react. And then, maybe, they get to meet with the candidate for the actual job interview.

“It’s a grind of a process,” said former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, who was vetted to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016.

Loyalty to Biden

If Walz was the underdog, Shapiro was seen as the front-runner from the beginning, followed by Kelly — and all three ended up as finalists.

In the small world of Democratic politics, the two governors are friends, and they attended a Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey last year, along with former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who served in the House with Walz and has been boosting him behind the scenes.

“Lori and I consider Tim and Gwen to be good friends of ours and we are excited for them and for the country to get to know the great people we know them to be,” Shapiro said in a statement Tuesday.

Kelly had the most impressive résumé of any candidate, but many Democrats see him as an underwhelming speaker and personally cool.

Some Harris allies also felt he was not loyal enough to Biden in the trying weeks after his poor debate performance and believed he had not done enough to defend the administration’s border policies, according to a person familiar with the process.

Kelly praised Walz in a statement, noting that his wife, Gabby Giffords, served with Walz in the House.

“Gabby and I are going to do everything we can to make Kamala Harris and Tim Walz the next president and vice president,” he said.

Kelly’s team did not respond to a request for additional comment.

While Shapiro, a golden-tongued prosecutor with presidential ambitions of his own, attracted the most vocal support, he also saw the most public campaign against him on Harris’ short list — especially over his stance on Israel and his criticism of pro-Palestinian protesters.

But her team was not convinced that he or any of the other candidates could really deliver their home states.

“Polling showed Shapiro wouldn’t help that much more than the others,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with the polling the party rushed to complete before Harris had to decide. “And bringing Gaza back into the foreground would just be awful all the way around. Nobody wanted to return to that.”

Other Harris allies raised concerns about his support for school vouchers, his handling of a sexual harassment claim against one of his closest former aides and a complicated legal case stemming from his time as attorney general.

But perhaps more important than any specific issue was concern that Shapiro’s personal ambitions could conflict with hers — something raised directly to Harris’ team by an adviser to Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has clashed publicly with Shapiro.

“I would not want to be ahead of Josh Shapiro in the line of succession,” said a senior Democrat who has worked with him.

Shapiro’s team did not respond to a request for additional comment.

People close to Harris said that given the unusual way she was nominated and recognizing that internal dissent and a primary challenge are possible in 2028, from the beginning she was looking for someone who would be willing to stand behind her and defend her thick or thin.

“MAGA is just going to unleash. These are going to be terrifyingly crazy days. She needs someone who will be able to prop her up during hard times and someone who, when these memes take hold, when the deepfakes take hold, when all those things start happening, will be able to stand by her,” said a person familiar with the Harris campaign’s thinking.

Walz, on the other hand, is seen as an affable team player who came up in the military and the classroom, not the arena of power.

He was seen as someone who would not “sabotage” her, as a person familiar with the vetting process put it, by leaking or talking behind her back should she become president.

White House officials took notice that he was one of the only ones who went to the cameras to publicly defend Biden after his tense July 3 meeting with Democratic governors after his poor debate performance.

Among Biden aides and advisers, the word most commonly used to describe Walz is “loyal.”

“She really does need someone who’s going to be a true partner to her, just like she was to President Biden,” said a person familiar with her thinking.

The case for Walz

Harris and Walz had met only a handful of times, most notably when she visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul in March.

But Harris and her team were watching as the candidates auditioned, in a way, through appearances on TV and the stump, and they were impressed as Walz became an overnight sensation by labeling Republican JD Vance as “weird” the day after Trump chose him.

The word showed up in a campaign news release two days after Walz used it, and then, a few days later, Harris herself used it at a fundraiser in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, and it became widely used across the party.

“Shapiro looks and talks like the next Obama, which is what a lot of folks were excited about,” said Caitlin Legacki, a veteran strategist who has worked with moderate and Midwest Democrats.“Walz looks and talks like [Sen.] Jon Tester [of Montana], which gives us running room in suburban, exurban and maybe even rural places.”

On Capitol Hill, Minnesota Democrats began pitching him to reporters and colleagues — before realizing that no one had given Walz a heads-up about the effort.

“I had to call Tim, because I hadn’t actually talked to him about whether he might want to be VP or not,” Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., said. “So, kind of got the cart before the horse. ... It truly happened organically.”

And for Democrats concerned about Muslim and Arab voters, especially in Michigan, Walz’s history winning a state with a large Muslim community is a relief.

“He doesn’t demean anybody that he represents, and that’s an important community in his state,” a Michigan elected official said.

While many Democratic officials scoffed at the voters who opted for “uncommitted” over Biden in this year’s presidential primaries, Walz defended them as “civically engaged” citizens.

And Democrats noted that the choice of Walz has the knock-on benefit of elevating Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who would become the first Indigenous female governor in American history if Walz steps down.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Harris’ choice of Walz was a “brilliant” decision. He added that Walz has the skills to speak directly to the concerns of Midwestern voters, and that while Minnesota is a blue state, Democrats there work for it every year.

“It’s never easy,” Ellison said. “We don’t win just because we’re a blue state…We win because we knock on doors and talk to our neighbors and work together. And Tim Walz understands the Minnesota method of winning.”

Minnesota nice

While Walz came seemingly out of nowhere for many Americans, Minnesota Democrats who have known him for years said they are “not at all” surprised, as Sen. Tina Smith put it, to see Walz go from unknown to a household name in two weeks flat. They say that soon, the rest of America will see what she and other Minnesotans already know.

“He’s just a really interesting leader,” Smith said.

Walz spent his last morning of relative normalcy with family, staff members and donuts at Eastcliff, the stately white mansion overlooking the Mississippi River in St. Paul’s leafy Merriam Park. The house, typically used by the president of the University of Minnesota, has been occupied by the governor’s family as their official residence undergoes renovations.

Wearing a black T-shirt, khakis and white sneakers under his signature camouflage baseball cap, Walz answered his cellphone and put it on speaker mode.

“Listen, I want you to do this with me,” Harris said. “Would you be my running mate?”

He did not hesitate.

“I would be honored, madam vice president,” he said. “The joy that you’re bringing back to this country, the enthusiasm that’s out there — it would be a privilege.”

Outside, neighbors marveled at the spectacle, saying Walz’s family has held several gatherings to apologize for the hubbub created by their presence. “He’s a very approachable guy and very, very down to Earth,” said Mike Veehof, who lives next door.

After hanging up with Harris, Walz called his staff and climbed into an SUV, which took him to a chartered Embraer E-170 bound for Philadelphia and his first joint rally with Harris. Secret Service agents were waiting there to take him under their protection.