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Home Front: Politix
How Did Tim Walz Survive a Presidential Campaign Vetting Process?
2026-01-12
[National Review] The scandal that derailed Tim Walz’s political career this week has been sitting out in the open for years and was in fact known to Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign when they decided to elevate the formerly obscure Minnesota governor to the national political stage.

The vice president and her closest advisers quickly cycled through a list of running-mate contenders and ultimately decided on a cheery, little-known Midwestern chief executive who, she believed, could balance out the ticket without dragging her down. Walz had a strong family unit and was seen as having a mostly clean and uncontroversial background. The word "folksy" became a go-to descriptor for campaign reporters. As one former Harris campaign staffer recalled, out of all the prospective vice-presidential candidate contenders, Walz was simply the candidate who put Harris and her inner circle most at ease.

Appearances aside, it’s very rare, perhaps unheard of, for a politician to make it through nearly two terms as a state governor without accumulating some baggage. It was no different with Walz. In vetting the governor, Harris’s team accounted for the fact that there was at that point significant evidence in the public record of "funds being misused," a former Harris campaign staffer told National Review. But the scandal that would destroy Walz’s gubernatorial reelection campaign was not seen as significant enough to automatically disqualify him from serving as first in line to the presidency, raising new questions about Harris’s political judgment as she weighs her own electoral future.
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