There might not be another governor in America who has done more with less than Minnesota’s Tim Walz.
With a one-seat Democratic majority in the state Senate this year, Walz signed laws that enshrined abortion rights, provided free breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students, legalized cannabis, restored felons’ voting rights, banned LGBT “conversion therapy”, and set ambitious new climate goals for the state.
Looking to the 2024 election, Democrats are hoping Walz can do more with less yet again. As the newly named chairman of the Democratic Governors’ Association, the Minnesotan is staring down a dauntingly narrow map of governor races across a challenging set of states—and potentially looking at a run for president in 2028.
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For now, Walz is focused on 2024. Next year, Democrats’ best opportunity to flip a governorship is in New Hampshire, where the popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is not running for re-election. But after New Hampshire and Vermont—a liberal state that has nevertheless consistently voted to keep GOP Gov. Phil Scott—Democrats’ next most competitive states are ruby-red Montana, Missouri, and Indiana.
Walz also has one of the hardest states for Democrats to defend: perennial battleground North Carolina, where Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is term-limited.
The political climate in 2024 could make those fundamentally difficult races even tougher; Democrats increasingly fear President Joe Biden’s abysmal approval ratings could drag down federal and state candidates.
But don’t count Walz among the worried. In a recent phone interview with The Daily Beast, the Minnesota governor distilled his vision for how Democrats, from Biden to governor candidates, can win in 2024—which he believes they will, the polls be damned.
“Focus on those issues around freedom, because we’re really trying to do it: freedom to have our own reproductive care, freedom in the bedroom, freedom to read the books we want to, and I think that is the message,” Walz said. “While they’re messing with nonsense, we’re improving people’s lives, getting things done, and I think that there’s no way that cannot help both the president and down ticket.”
In the age of Trump and MAGA-aligned governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, that frame is one Democrats are increasingly embracing. Walz’s specific record as governor situates him perhaps better than any other Democratic chief executive to make that case.
Factor in his own sunny midwestern disposition and his background as a high-school history teacher and it’s not hard to see Democrats deploying Walz as something like an anti-DeSantis. In fact, it’s a contrast Walz welcomes.
“There’s a clear difference between Ron DeSantis and me, and there’s a clear difference in our states on the policies going forward,” Walz said. “He’s down there worrying about taking books away… and we’re getting rid of hunger. We’re focusing on children’s mental health. We’re focusing on climate.”
Walz has made something of a sport of attacking DeSantis—at least subtly. He has drawn contrasts a number of times on Twitter, and is showing Democrats how they can lay out the popularity of the party’s policies, contrasted with the unpopularity of some of DeSantis’ moves.
What Walz and his fellow Democrats have accomplished in Minnesota reflects what the stakes for success are for Democrats in 2024. Before speaking to The Daily Beast, Walz had traveled to the inauguration of Gov. Andy Beshear, who won a second term in conservative Kentucky in November.
“A lot of folks down there said, well, heck, set our sights high like Minnesota is,” Walz said, listing how even Democrats in redder states could achieve policy on paid family medical leave, climate change, gun control, school meals, and abortion rights if they pull off victories in targeted states in 2024.
For Walz personally, a strong performance in 2024 could put himself on the map as a national figure. A deep bench of Democratic governors are eyeing the 2028 presidential election, from California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker to Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer.
Walz, whose term ends in 2026, said he has “never thought about” running for the White House. “I’m out there doing what I can and just trying to take care of things here,” he said. “But I have to say, I certainly enjoy when I get the chance to go to some of these other states, to kind of learn their politics and listen to people.”
Having secured two terms as governor—and six terms in a rural U.S. House district that Trump carried in 2016—it’s fair to say Walz understands how to win in purple states like his. But the 2024 battleground, stocked with GOP-leaning states, will test his skills.
Speaking to The Daily Beast, Walz wasn’t eager to foreclose any options, so long as Democrats field a strong crop of recruits. Beshear’s victory in Kentucky, the Minnesota governor said, is proof that his party can compete anywhere when the right candidate and the right message align.
“I don’t think you write off any state. We’re gonna play wherever we get that good candidate, where it makes sense to put resources in,” Walz said, “those states like North Carolina, Washington, Delaware that we hold, but Montana, places like that.”
Democratic Governor Tim Walz participates in a gun violence prevention roundtable.
Brian Snyder/ReutersAn unusual feature of the 2024 governorship map is how few incumbents are up for re-election, which puts a high premium on recruitment and primary election success for both parties.
For the Trump-era GOP, that’s bad news. In recent elections, Republican primary voters have consistently elevated MAGA candidates who lose winnable contests to Democrats, much to the chagrin of national party officials and operatives.
In North Carolina, the top governor battleground of 2024, Republicans could very well repeat the cycle. Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is the clear favorite of the party base, but has a long history of incendiary and offensive rhetoric that could make him toxic in the general election—a fear that several GOP primary rivals are hoping to exploit.
In the 2022 midterms, the Democratic Governors’ Association, then led by Cooper, intervened in GOP primaries in hopes of securing less electable opponents. In Illinois, the DGA spent $19 million to boost Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator, who won his primary and was then easily dispatched by Pritzker in November. The Democratic campaign arms for the House and Senate deployed similar tactics.
But Walz ruled out using similar tactics in 2024 when asked by The Daily Beast.
“I just think our winning strategy is, let these governors talk about the things that impact lives,” he said. “So we won’t get involved with that again. I know it’s worked.. But it’s not something we do.”
Like many Democrats, Walz is placing a great deal of faith in voters to base their decisions next November on what Biden has done to impact their lives, above all else. The administration certainly has a number of policy achievements to run on, from the $1 billion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act and other marquee achievements.
But voters have not connected Biden’s moves to easing inflation and improving economic indicators, or in some cases, don’t see the economy improving at all. Pundits from all corners of the party are fixated on this dynamic ahead of 2024 and are dissecting how Biden can resolve it and reverse his sinking approval ratings.
Top officials in the party understand they have a major problem, including Biden himself. According to The Washington Post, the president recently grilled his own staff on his low poll numbers and how they plan to communicate better on the economy. The same story also reported that Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D), who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, expressed concern she could not win her race with Biden at the top of the ticket.
In Walz’s home state of Minnesota, there are warning lights blinking. In 2016, Trump almost won the state, but in 2020, Biden carried it by seven points. A recent poll from MinnPost found Biden ahead of Trump by three points, well within the survey’s margin of error.
For his part, Walz blamed that situation on a “fractured media market” in which people “go and get validation of their own positions.” He also demurred when asked if Biden’s campaign needed to invest more in marginal battleground states like Minnesota, given tight poll numbers.
Like many top Democrats, Walz is confident that the president’s standing will improve if and when voters see the 2024 election as a choice between Biden and Trump. “Joe Biden’s age will be a distant third or fourth in their minds,” he said.
“My biggest fear is complacency,” Walz admitted. “And that’s the one that I think these types of polls might snap Democrats out of that complacency and say, ‘Look, you know, I’m not thrilled about his age, but god dang, he’s still delivering.”
“Everybody wants to do the horse race. I’m not a big fan of the horse race. I’m more of a fan of let’s just focus on where our end result is, keep grinding it out,” he continued. “And governors are great messengers in that.”
Next November will represent voters’ verdict on Biden’s record, and Walz’s too, in more ways than one. While national eyes will focus on whether Democrats can win key governor races, in Minnesota, voters will return their judgment on his party’s ambitious agenda in deciding whether to award them another two years running the state legislature.
Both results will impact Walz’s political future and, potentially, the appeal of his playbook of muscling ambitious policy through tight margins.
For now, the governor laughs at online discourse from liberal commentators who are flabbergasted that Minnesota’s paper-thin Democratic majority made legislative supermajorities in more left-leaning states look positively lazy.
“Here’s the thing on it,” Walz said.” How popular is reproductive rights? How popular is paid family and medical leave? How popular is school lunches? Those things poll incredibly high. And so yes, they are progressive ideas, but they’re also super popular. And I think that’s the issue that we showed, and I hope it’s the model for the rest of the country. Go bold on things that improve people’s lives and are popular, and you’ll be rewarded for it.”
