Why Jewish Americans should be thrilled to vote for Tim Walz
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Emily Tamkin August 6, 2024
The announcement of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate may disappoint those who hoped to elect the country’s first Jewish vice president in November. But American Jews should be tremendously excited to vote for Walz — because he’s shown himself to be aligned with many Jewish voters not just on many key issues, but also on the very idea of the point of public service.
And I, personally, am excited to vote for him because something he said last year reminds me of my grandfather, a state legislator and judge, who used to say: “When you run, run with everything you have. When you win, act like you’re never running for office again.”
In this most crucial election, with the survival of our democracy itself on the line, Walz has the same winning philosophy. “You don’t win elections to bank political capital,” he has said. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”
Walz, a former congressman and high school geography teacher, beat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania in a tight race for the vice presidential spot; another Jewish governor, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, was also reportedly considered. But on issues American Jewish Democrats hold dear — like abortion, gun control and, yes, Israel — Walz is as well-aligned a pick as any Harris could have chosen.
On abortion, which is primed to be one of the most central issues in this election — Harris has already shown particular strength in articulating why reproductive rights are important, and is clearly hoping that fear of further bans will get voters out to the polls — 83% of American Jews support legalization in all or most cases. Walz is a national leader on this issue: Last year, he signed a law codifying abortion rights in the Minnesota state constitution, the first state to so enshrine abortion rights after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He also issued two executive orders to protect traveling patients and Minnesota providers from other states’ abortion penalties.
In that, he stands in contrast to Sen. JD Vance, President Donald Trump’s running mate, who has said he would like abortion to be illegal nationally. Vance has also voted against protecting access to in vitro fertilization services nationwide — a vote in favor of states being able to ban a process many families rely on to have children, including almost one-fifth of Jewish women.
Walz, on the other hand, has personal experience to support his understanding of how essential access to IVF is.
“My oldest daughter’s name is Hope,” Walz recently said. “That’s because my wife and I spent seven years trying to get pregnant, needed fertility treatments, things like IVF.” Republicans like Vance who express interest in restricting or banning those services, or who express support for them while blocking legislation that would stop states from effectively banning the practice, “are the anti-freedoms,” he said.
Walz’s alignment with American Jews when it comes to matters of personal medical decision-making goes beyond family planning. According to a 2023 survey from the Public Religions Research Institute, American Jews are the most sympathetic religious group to those who have trans identities or are gender fluid. Walz has mirrored this, too, signing an executive order to protect Minnesota residents’ right to gender-affirming care. “When someone else is given basic rights, others don’t lose theirs,” he said.
On gun violence — which 79% of American Jews see as a very big problem, according to the Survey Center on American Life, compared to 58% of Americans at large — Walz has shown a deeply meaningful ability to grow in his perspective.
As a gun-owning Democrat, an Army veteran and an avid hunter, he was once a darling of the National Rifle Association. Then, after the tragic 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida,Walz shifted his tone, coming out in favor of an assault weapons ban. “This is about bringing in responsible gun owners who understand something’s got to be done,” he said at the time.
This, too, is in line with what Judaism offers us: So many of the stories that we celebrate and study are about people who changed their minds and their lives. (Take the Genesis story — and Broadway musical — in which the prophetic Joseph and his resentful brothers change their minds about one another.) There is a Talmudic teaching that changing our position is changing our fortune. Walz did this for himself by changing his mind.
But it isn’t just reproductive rights and guns. While, despite some popular conceptions, Israel is not the most important issue to most American Jewish voters — according to one 2020 study, only 4% considered it their most pressing issue — it’s perhaps also worth noting that Walz’s views on Israel are not dissimilar to those of the median American Jewish voter. He’s expressed support for the country throughout his career, and has described both Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the situation in Gaza as “intolerable.”
Walz, like Harris, will inevitably upset some voters, Jewish and not, with what he says about Israel and Palestine in the months ahead. But thus far, he has threaded the needle by stressing his support for a Jewish state and Jewish people — including Jewish students amid campus protests — while also showing vocal support for civic engagement and disagreement.
In one striking example of his ability to appeal to pro-Palestinian as well as pro-Israel voters, Walz described the progressive-led campaign for Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in presidential primaries to signal anger over President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war as “civic engagement.”
“People are frustrated,” he said, “but it bodes well for me that they’re actively engaged to go out and cast his vote and ask for change.”
Walz was creating space for people to disagree with each other in the public square, which is to say that he was preserving the public square as a place to show up to try to make positive change.
That kind of thinking is, to my mind, the best of what Judaism encourages us to do.
One of the most cited lines of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers) says, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” (It is so often cited, in fact, that Shapiro used it today in his statement on not being Harris’ vice presidential pick.) The idea may not be as folksy as “you win elections to burn political capital, not to bank it,” but the idea is the same.
Harris picked a running mate who has demonstrated that he knows those with power are not free to desist from the work: He has proven so by, again and again, centering and trying to expand the rights and dignity of the people in his state. That is encouraging, at least to this Jewish voter.
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