Gwen Walz, cool-headed and active political spouse, campaigns to the wire

WASHINGTON — With little campaign cash, no support from the national Democratic Party and an electorate that had favored Republican candidates, Tim Walz was about to abandon his first run for political office — vying for the seat representing Minnesota’s 1^st Congressional District.

The reason the future governor was ready to quit his nascent political career? He said the index — the degree to which a congressional district leans Republican or Democrat — “sucked” and his discharge papers from a 24-year career in the National Guard had not come through, said Rep. Betty McCollum, who was a key supporter of Walz’s first bid for political office.

Walz suggested his wife Gwen could run in his stead, McCollum, D-4^thDistrict, said.

Gwen Walz had been at her husband’s side during his first foray into politics and knew the political landscape, issues and voters probably as well as he did.

But Walz’s discharge papers did come through, in May of 2006, and he stayed in the race, unseating Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht and winning reelection five times.

When McCollum next met up with the couple on the campaign trail, Gwen Walz, who had shared her fertility struggles with the lawmaker, proudly announced she was pregnant with her son, Gus.

“I am so happy for you and am so glad you are not running for Congress,” McCollum said.

The couple’s political partnership continued after Walz was elected the state’s governor and is likely to play out if he is elected vice president.

While Usha Vance, the wife of Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance, is hardly seen on the campaign trail, Gwen Walz is supporting her husband’s bid for higher office full stop.

She has made dozens of campaign appearances from coast-to-coast and repeated visits to swing states. Promoting abortion rights and Kamala Harris’ agenda, it appears Gwen Walz will continue to hunt for votes until the polls close Nov. 5 as assiduously as her husband, who insists there’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.

Yet her campaign style differs vastly from her husband’s.

Tim Walz is given to fiery speeches and colorful language when attacking Donald Trump and his allies — he recently called Elon Musk a “dips—” — and has sometimes made damaging “misstatements” in the heat of the moment.

Meanwhile, Gwen is cool headed and campaigns with the discipline of a seasoned teacher who has worked hard on her lesson plan. And she often shows up on the stump with a gift.

“I brought with me some cookies — this is my great-grandmother’s recipe,” Walz said at a campaign stop in Smyrna, Georgia. “And so, as I go around the country, we’re bringing these. So maybe you’ll have to stand in line to vote, then you’ll have a cookie.”

Gwen was tough during that stop, despite the cookies. Having made public her struggles with fertility, she knocked Trump for his claim during a Fox News town hall that he is “the father of in vitro fertilization.”

“Father of IVF?’” she said. “More like, father of Georgia’s abortion ban.”

Gwen takes the megaphone

While the campaign declined to grant an interview with the state’s first lady, others who know her said she’s a political spouse with a unique way of connecting with people whose skills complement those of her husband.

“We have always worked as a partnership,” Gwen Walz told the podcast “What if it Works” in July. “We are still one another’s closest advisers.”

Sometimes, she even spoke for her husband.

When he campaigned as an underdog in 2006, Tim Walz was scheduled to speak at a fund-raising dinner in his hometown of Mankato, hoping to win over local DFL officials and raise some campaign cash.

But he had developed laryngitis. So Gwen stepped up to give his speech and impressed the crowd with her confidence and command.

John Klaber first met the couple in 1996 as new teachers at Mankato West High School, where he was serving as a school psychologist. He heard the speech and was among those who wondered “did we get the right Walz?” to run for Congress.

“She was really impressive,” he said. He also said that Harris, in picking Walz as her running mate, has “gotten a two-fer.”

Gwen also came to her husband’s aid at another key moment in his political career.

In 2018, in his first run for governor, Walz fought for the DFL endorsement in a convention center in Rochester.

Yet Walz lost that endorsement to state Sen. Erin Murphy and his campaign brought his delegates outside at the convention center for a pep talk.

Because the voting had gone on for multiple rounds and the surviving candidates were allowed to give additional speeches after each round, Walz’s voice was shot. 

So he gave the megaphone to his wife, who delivered the speech to urge supporters to keep working, to take the campaign to the August primary, which her husband won.

Ambassador for the governor

Gwen Walz, 58, was born in Glencoe and grew up in southwestern Minnesota. The governor met Gwen when they were both teachers in Nebraska, where she taught English and the governor taught social studies.

They shared a classroom with a divider in the middle and Gwen Walz could hear her future husband give lessons and says she was smitten. They married in June 1994 and spent their honeymoon in China — on an educational trip they had arranged for students.

A graduate of the Lutheran-affiliated Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter and Minnesota State University, Mankato, Gwen persuaded her husband to move to her home state two years after they married. They both went to work for Mankato West High School.

She says she relishes her career as a teacher, which continued after she became a political spouse. But it was not free of problems.

Klaber said a blind student at her high school filed a civil rights complaint against Gwen Walz. The reason? In explaining something to her students, Walz had said, “You see what I mean?” The student said that showed bias.

After an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights, the complaint was dropped. Klaber, who was then serving as special education director at the school, said Gwen handled a stressful situation with grace and sensitivity.

“She was very compassionate about the situation,” Klaber said. “There wasn’t any evidence of any anger toward that student.”

Klaber also said Gwen appointed his daughter, Megan, as head of the school newspaper, even though she was dyslexic and “couldn’t spell a lick.”

“She knew that Megan had a friend who was good with spelling and she made her a copy editor,” Klaber said. That allowed his daughter to successfully make use of her other journalistic skills.

After Tim Walz was sworn in as governor in 2019, his wife moved into a suite of offices located closest to him, the first time a Minnesota first lady had done so. Though her role was unpaid, she served as both a key adviser and an ambassador for the governor, making personal appearances around the state.

And she lobbied the state Legislature, especially on two issues: gun safety and criminal justice reform.

While they function as a partnership, Gwen Walz may have sometimes taken an unexpected  lead on an issue. 

For instance, just a couple of months after her husband became the state’s governor, Gwen attended a state Capitol rally and gave a fiery speech on the need for the state Senate — which was in GOP hands — to take up new gun safety legislation.

It would establish universal background checks of gun purchasers and extreme protection orders that would take weapons from people who could be dangerous to others or to themselves. The bill was eventually approved after Democrats took control of the chamber. 

She led the crowd in the chant “Bring it up for a vote!” and threatened to go after Republican senators in districts her husband had carried.   

Gwen was also active when her husband was in Congress, working with other congressional spouses on the issue of expanding education opportunities for the incarcerated.  

Paula O’Loughlin, who was the associate dean of Gustavus Adolphus College and is now the provost of Augsburg University, said her friendship with Gwen began during that time about a dozen years ago.

“She is very articulate and very focused and has a keen sense of justice,” O’Loughlin said. “She also has a great deal of tenacity and courage.”

O’Loughlin also said Gwen knows what her limitations are. “She’s pretty careful to know what her role is and what she can do and what she can’t,” she said. 

Upon learning that O’Loughlin’s spouse was seriously ill, Gwen brought a wild rice dish, a family recipe, and cookies to her home. “What kind of a governor’s spouse brings a hotdish across town?” she asked.

Gwen Walz has a part-time teaching job at Augsburg University, but took a leave of absence to campaign.

O’Loughlin said both Tim and Gwen Walz are teachers at their very cores, have always been equal partners and are drawn to public service.

So, O’Loughlin predicts that if the Harris-Walz team wins the Nov. 5 election, Gwen will be an active second lady, much like Jill Biden when her husband was vice president, and Tipper Gore and Joan Mondale.

“To me, it would be weird if Gwen were to sit on the sidelines,” O’Loughlin said.

Editor’s Note: Ana Radelat wrote this story for MinnPost.com. Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C., correspondent. MinnPost reporter Peter Callaghan contributed to this story.

This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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