Tim Walz Gives Kamala Harris A Climate Boost

Green groups are hailing Tim Walz as a climate champion, citing his record as Minnesota governor, while the Trump camp works to paint him as an environmental extremist.

Vice President Kamala Harris boosted the Democratic presidential ticket’s climate credentials when she picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate, advocates said Tuesday, pointing to a record of expanding public transit, subsidizing electric bicycles and enacting one of the industrial Midwest’s strongest laws to phase down fossil fuel emissions.

The popular second-term governor, whose folksy accent and plain-spoken defenses of social democracy shone on national television in recent weeks, last year set the North Star State on a path to 100% carbon-free power by 2040, despite his party maintaining a narrow, single-vote majority in the state legislature.

While the 2023 Minnesota law dictates that renewables make up the majority of the state’s energy mix, the legislation broke with progressive orthodoxy on wind and solar and included nuclear power. Supporting atomic energy divided Democrats in Minnesota, which remains the only state with a complete ban on building nuclear plants. But Walz previously pushed to lift the moratorium and last year threw his support behind a $300,000 study to examine the potential for next-generation reactors.

“Minnesotans are not going to wait any longer,” Walz said before signing the bill into law. “They’ve made it clear — they make it clear with their voices, they make it clear with their advocacy, they make it clear with their votes — that they expect movement around climate change to happen and it is happening today.”

Already, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has sought to cast Walz’s record as radical. But criticism from some environmentalists for not taking a hardline stance against a controversial oil pipeline could help Walz burnish his image as a pragmatist who has overseen the biggest manufacturing revival in the Midwest.