Gwen Walz: the Coolheaded, Ultracompetent Political Spouse
Originally published by Joseph Bernstein for the New York Times
In 2006, during his first campaign for Congress, Tim Walz was scheduled to speak at a fund-raising dinner in his hometown, Mankato, Minn. At the time, he was a political unknown in a tightly contested race against a six-term incumbent. The dinner was a chance to stump in front of his local district of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and to bolster his campaign coffers.
There was only one problem: Mr. Walz had laryngitis.
As guests loaded up plates with food, they were surprised to see someone else take the stage: Gwen Walz, Mr. Walz’s wife.
She was used to speaking in front of a crowd: Like her husband, Ms. Walz had been a public-school teacher for more than a decade. Those sitting in the audience were impressed by her confidence and clarity.
“There were other candidates who spoke, and she was the most articulate of the bunch,” said John Klaber, a North Mankato resident who was at the fund-raiser almost two decades ago. “We all looked around and said, ‘Why isn’t she running?’”
Most of the American public got its first good look at Gov. Tim Walz last week at a rally in Philadelphia alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, who had that day announced him as her running mate. At the end of his speech, the nation also got its first glimpse of the woman to whom he has been married for 30 years.
As Ms. Walz enters the national stage, critics on the right are already trying to portray her — as they have with her husband — as a left-wing radical who countenanced the civil unrest in her state after the death of George Floyd. But at home in Minnesota, where she has spent most of her life, friends and political observers describe her as the coolheaded and ultracompetent counterpart to a man known for an intuitive and charismatic political style.
“We have always worked as a partnership,” Ms. Walz, 58, told the self-improvement podcast “What If It Works” last month, later adding, “We are still one another’s closest advisers.”
Ms. Walz did not comment for this article.
The first gubernatorial spouse in Minnesota to keep an office in the state capital, Ms. Walz regularly advises her husband and has used her platform to advance policy initiatives, most significantly around offering college degree programs to inmates.
A Package Deal
“When you get Tim, you get Gwen,” said Mr. Klaber, who worked with Ms. Walz in the Mankato school district for more than a decade.
Raised in the tiny farming town of Ivanhoe, Minn., only a 15-minute drive from South Dakota’s eastern border, Ms. Walz is the daughter of schoolteachers, and the eldest of four sisters. Ms. Walz was a caretaker in the family, according to her youngest sister, Heidi Ohlmann.
“She’s always looking out for everyone,” Ms. Ohlmann said in an interview.