Now VP Candidate, Gov. Walz Has Long History With Jewish Community

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has been picked as the Vice President candidate on the Democratic ticket topped by current VP, Kamala Harris, according to a social media announcement from Harris. He is the first Minnesotan on a national ticket since former Vice President Walter Mondale lost the 1984 election to Ronald Reagan.

If the Democratic ticket wins November’s general election, Walz would step down as governor with Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan assuming the role. She would be the first Native American woman to become a governor in the United States, and the first female governor in Minnesota’s history. By state statute, Senate President Bobby Joe Champion would become the new lieutenant governor.

Walz spent 12 years as a congressman, first getting elected representing Minnesota’s 1st District in 2006. He won the DFL nomination for governor in a crowded field in 2018 and then defeated Jeff Johnson (R) by almost 9 points. 

Gov. Tim Walz with Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Sen. Steve Cwodzinski, Rep. Emma Greenman, Rep. Frank Hornstein, Sen. Sandy Pappas, Rep. Sandra Feist, and Rep. Heather Edelson at a press conference at the Minnesota State Capitol on Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. (Lonny Goldsmith/TC Jewfolk)

In 2022, he defeated former State Sen. Scott Jensen in the general election. Jensen made several antisemitic remarks throughout the campaign, including comparing the COVID-19 mask mandates that Walz supported to the Holocaust. Walz and Flanagan stood with Jewish members of Minnesota’s legislature to denounce Jensen’s comparison.

“[Members of the Jewish community] were very clear to say, ‘don’t make this analogy because it is incredibly harmful, both from the trauma but also from the diminishing of what it does,’” Walz said at a press conference at the Minnesota Capitol. “They were asked, and they were ignored. They asked again and offered to educate, and they were ignored again and again.”

In January 2020, a rally at Temple Israel was organized as a response to months of ongoing attacks on Orthodox Jews in the New York City area. The attacks ranged from verbal abuse and physical assaults, to a shooting at a kosher grocery store that left five people dead in Jersey City, N.J., and a machete-wielding man stabbing Jews at a Hannukah party in Monsey, N.Y., who hospitalized five people. Walz was one of the speakers featured at the event. 

“You have my pledge…[that] the authority that I have, and the resources of the entire state of Minnesota, will be brought to bear [so] that every single one of you can feel safe in your community, safe in your schools, safe in your worship, and safe in your lives,” Walz said. “There’s no room for fear, no room for hate.”

Steve Hunegs, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, said that Walz has been a “stalwart in opposition to extreme pressure involving divestment through his role at the State Board of Investment,” where they have faced pressure to divest state funds from Israel.

“His record of service to our country with the Minnesota National Guard is consistent with municipal values of patriotism and a robust international posture for the state,” Hunegs said. “Something which is bipartisan over the years.”

Walz also was a guest on Jewfolk Podcast’s The Jews Are Tired in October 2020 as part of TC Jewfolk’s J-Cation fundraiser, where he talked about the relationship he has fostered with Minnesota’s Jewish community. 

Listen to “44. Live with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz” on Spreaker.

“In southern Minnesota, the [Jewish] community is relatively small, but it didn’t take long to find those folks who are working on social justice issues where I find myself gravitating to,” Walz said. “I think over time as a member of Congress, working on social justice issues, working in getting to know leaders, like…[Secretary of State] Steve Simon, [State Rep.] Frank Hornstein, [State Sen.] Ron Latz, others. And then just friends throughout the community.

“[Temple Israel] Rabbi [Marcia] Zimmerman presided over our inauguration and we were very clear in the faith leaders that were represented that day, from Rabbi Zimmerman, to our Muslim friends, to the Indigenous folks who were there and over time, we’ve worked on a lot of, I think, common ground issues.”

Walz spoke publicly at the Oct. 10 community rally to support Israel at Beth El Synagogue, saying that there was “not an inch of space between the folks that are here tonight and their support of Israel and what’s right to be done.”

“What was evident on [Oct. 7] was the absolute lack of that humanity. The terrorism and the barbarism brought on – that’s not a geopolitical discussion. That’s murder,” Walz said. 

Walz referenced the Beth El rally in June at the JCRC annual event. 

“Having been in that space at Beth El and just feeling trauma that could blot out the sun, there is still that sense of community, that sense of purpose,” he said. “It is important that this is a resilient community. But resiliency isn’t enough. We don’t want to have to be resilient, we’d like these things to be prevented.”

When he was a congressman, Walz traveled to Israel, the West Bank, Syria and Turkey as part of a diplomatic delegation in 2009, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. While representing the Minnesota 1st District, he voted with the party to allocate foreign aid, including to Israel, and to back the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Before politics, a teacher

Walz’s pre-politics career was as a social studies teacher, and his master’s degree dissertation was on the teaching of Holocaust and genocide studies in school. As governor he signed legislation in 2023 that mandated the teaching of the Holocaust and other genocides in Minnesota schools, which is something he said in that 2020 interview he hoped would happen.

“When Minnesota has a chance to put these into our standards, we need to take this to an entirely other level, that we don’t teach it in a historical vacuum of what happened,” Walz said. “But there are clear-cut signals that you can start to see where these things happen.”

Gov. Tim Walz applauding Dora Zaidenweber at the JCRC’s annual event in June. (Photo by Darrell Owens)

At the 2023 JCRC annual event, Walz gave a standing ovation to Dora Zaidenweber, who at 99 years old, testified before a Minnesota House of Representatives committee that helped move the Holocaust and genocide studies mandate through the legislative process. Zaidenweber passed away in September 2023.

“It was the folks in this room that said, ‘we need to do better.’ We need to do better on Holocaust education. We need to do better on ethnic studies. And I tell you this as a teacher and as governor, too,” Walz said at the 2024 JCRC event. “We don’t need test scores or anything to tell that we’re failing. People’s misunderstanding of what’s happening or what has happened in the Middle East is just stunning in many cases. And I think that lack of information, that lack of knowledge and the way people throw around certain terms or seem to try and rewrite history, it’s apparent to me that what JCRC, Dora [Zaidenweber, z”l], and so many of the advocates in this room knew was, we have got to educate, especially our young people, about the true story. We have to make sure they know. ”

Being at the event and embracing Zaidenweber was “consistent with his long-standing interest of recognizing the importance of Holocaust education,” said JCRC Executive Director Steve Hunegs.

As a teacher in his home state of Nebraska, he was a Belfer Fellow to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he was one of 50 – one from each state.

“We spent the week there before that incredible resource and research facility opened to teach us how to talk about [the Holocaust] and how to teach,” Walz said at the JCRC annual event earlier this year. “And I think in all those 30-plus years from then, we still have a long way to go. And now we have tools to do that.”

Said JCRC Deputy Executive Director Ethan Roberts: “Through words and action, the JCRC has always felt that Governor Walz and his staff have been very responsive to our community’s perspective on issues ranging from Holocaust, genocide, and ethnic studies education to Israel and combatting antisemitism.”

At the JCRC annual event, Walz spoke about important Holocaust and genocide education is in the context of rising antisemitism.

“It’s also critically important now with the rise of antisemitism, and we saw your children feeling like they couldn’t be on campuses in Minnesota,” Walz said. “And that not only breaks my heart, it is wrong.”

Little separates leading choices

Among the finalists for the vice president selection was Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. He was the only Jewish candidate among the media-reported shortlist, although according to the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, Shapiro’s views aren’t dissimilar from Walz. However, only Shapiro was called out by many progressives, including members of the St. Paul and Minneapolis city councils, for his support of Israel.

St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalali posted on Twitter/X that Harris should not pick a “hardcore Zionist” running mate – specifically Shapiro. Jalali wrote in the first of a series of social media posts on the platform formerly known as Twitter: “I’m just a lefty council president of a Midwest city but everyone in my world is saying Shapiro cannot be VP pick if this new POTUS candidacy wants to energize the base & win.

“Do not deflate our Democratic Party just as soon as you inflated it, by choosing a hardcore Zionist VP.”

Her post was amplified by Minneapolis City Council members Jeremiah Ellison, Aurin Chouhdry and Aisha Chughtai.

Ethan Roberts, the deputy executive director of the JCRC, said Walz, Shapiro, and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly hold positions that align with the direction set by the Biden/Harris administration. 

“For St. Paul Council President Mitra Jalali to claim that only Gov. Shapiro is unacceptable to be vice president is just one more example of the antisemitism which continues to infect too much of the political left,” Roberts said. 

“Apparently, it is not divisive when non-Jewish politicians such as Gov. Walz or Sen. Kelly hold mainstream pro-Zionist positions on Israel. However, when a Jewish elected official such as Gov. Shapiro holds those same mainstream pro-Zionist positions, which are also shared by most Jews, he becomes for the left the wrong kind of Jew who must be ostracized from the Democratic party and disqualified from holding national office.”

Shapiro has said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “one of the worst leaders of all time.”

“We can’t forget the genesis of this, but we also can’t ignore the death and the destruction that’s occurred in Gaza,” Shapiro told the Washington Post in March. “For those who are peacefully protesting, I support their right to do that and I’ll defend that, and I want to make sure they feel heard. And I think in Pennsylvania, they do feel heard.”

Said Roberts: “As a Jewish community, we refuse to be marginalized and tokenized by politicians who are more interested in driving mainstream Jewish voices from the public square and office, including that of the vice presidency, than bringing people together for the common good.”