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Arjun Singh
Music from the levers. Reader supported newsroom, this is lever time. I'm Arjun Singh. It's official. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is going to be the running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris as they go up against Donald Trump and JD Vance. Now you may have just asked yourself, who, and it's what a lot of Americans are probably thinking too. In this chaotic election cycle, waltz emerged in the last few weeks as a front runner for the VP pick. He's a folksy Midwestern Democrat, and he's managed to win support with progressives and establishment politicians alike in his state, he increased taxes on corporations, passed free school lunch protections for transgender youth and a law that would move all of the state's electric grid to renewable energy by 2040 and he did it with a razor thin Democratic majority in the legislature. But is that the whole story today on lever time, I sit down with veteran political reporter Ryan Grimm to get a sense of who Walt is and how he's managed to find broad appeal in a fractured Democratic Party, and whether this guy is the real deal or not.

Jeff Blodgett
What's interesting about Tim and one reason why he's a successful politician, he's not a career politician. He was for many years, a teacher, high school teacher in the small city of Mankato, Minnesota, which is in southern Minnesota. He was a teacher. He was the football coach there. He also was in the National Guard. And so he's a veteran, and he decided to run for office, run for Congress, actually, in the first congressional district, kind of a red district in 2005 after the reelection of George Bush.

Arjun Singh
Jeff Blodgett is a former aide to Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, and someone who's known Tim Walz for over a decade. Minnesota

Speaker 1
was in a tough place. We had lost Paul Wellstone to the plane crash a couple years before that, people felt like the state was moving in a pretty conservative direction and was the country. And Tim Walz felt compelled to step up and run. So he's he's very authentic guy. He's a he has a blue collar vibe to him. He is someone who I would consider a progressive populist, and that he is emphasis is always on the economic concerns and circumstances of working people and middle class families. Everything he does is really focused on that set of issues for the most part, and has been tremendously successful.

Arjun Singh
Jeff knows well where Walt's learned how to be a campaigner, because he was partially responsible for helping him launch his political career. I

Speaker 1
worked for many years for US Senator Paul Wellstone, and when we lost him in a tragic plane crash in 2002 a number of us created a training center to help spur on others to step up in Paul wellstone's footsteps. So we created something called Camp Wellstone, which is a training center for people involved in politics and public life, and one of the tracks in that camp was a candidate track. And Tim Walz showed up as a participant in Camp Wellstone in January of 2005

Arjun Singh
a big part of Walt's appeal is his ability to be a good messenger. In the last several weeks, waltz earned national attention for the TV hits he was doing. Here he is on MSNBC, for example, a couple weeks ago. What

Tim Walz
I know is, is that people like JD Vance know nothing about small town America. My town had 400 people in it. 24 kids in my graduating class. 12 were cousins. And he gets it all wrong. It's a not about hate. It's not about collapsing in the golden rule. There is mind your own damn business. Their policies are what destroyed rural America. They've divided us. They're in our exam rooms. They're telling us what books to read. And I think what Kamala Harris knows is bringing people together around the shared values, strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class, health care that's affordable and accessible. Those are the things you look what they're talking about. They went right to division. We forced

Speaker 1
people to do a two minute stump speech. And he clearly was someone who was going places. He had a an authenticity about him. He had a charisma about him. He had an ability to connect with people that was obvious from the start, and so all the kind of elements involved in running for office, especially in an area that isn't particularly blue. Hi. My

Tim Walz
name is Tim Walz, and I'm running for Congress here in southern Minnesota for several important reasons, but today I'd like to tell you about one issue that's very personal to me. I'm a retired Command Sergeant Major in the Minnesota National Guard, and after years of firing artillery, I sustained severe inner ear damage because I have good health insurance provided through my employer, I was able to have surgery on my ear. As my ear healed, my hearing was gradually restored one morning, several weeks after the surgery, I awoke to a sound I couldn't identify. I asked my wife what I was hearing, and she told me, Tim, that's your four year old daughter. Hope. You see hope wakes up singing every morning, but I had never heard that sound until that day. I'm running for Congress, because I believe we as a country have a moral obligation to ensure that every father can hear his daughter saying that every citizen receives the best care our medical community has to offer. I'm Tim Walz, and I approve this message because I've heard how important healthcare is to everyone. He was

Speaker 1
running in the first congressional district, and so you know, he as a Democrat, he had to show that he was actually someone who people believe knew their lives and connected well with, with what they were going through as as you know, as they, you know, live their lives in the first congressional district. And so that's, that's what I met him. He was fun and funny, so easy to get along with, and he went on to win that race

Arjun Singh
eventually, waltz becomes governor of Minnesota, which he is right now, and he's in a pretty remarkable record with a narrow majority in the state house and a split Senate. Waltz has signed into law a liberal Wish List of legislation, including legalizing marijuana, restoring voting rights to felons, and creating a paid family and medical leave program. But I wanted to know from Jeff, what's his deal? What motivates waltz and why does he believe in this stuff?

Speaker 1
He's a teacher, and so pretty much everything he talked about was what had to do with education, and the importance of investing in education as a way of people advancing in their own lives and their own careers. He actually has done a lot around workforce development and job retraining and community colleges and some of the non traditional paths where where people are trying to advance themselves through education as a way of moving up in kind of the job structure, but generally education. And it was about the kind of future that families wanted for their kids, whether kids were going to have the same opportunities. One other thing, though, I think that had to do with why he was chosen in the end, and I think it really came down to personal connection with Harris, because when you sit down with Tim walls, you can't help but like him, and he has a charisma about him and a genuineness that you are attracted to right away. He's also interested in you, though he asked questions of other people. He wants to know about your lives. He remembers people and their stories and all that stuff is, you know, part of, again, part of his ability to kind of ground what he does in real people and their stories and their lives. And I think that Harris obviously connected with that, and that may have been the deciding factor, I don't really know, but I'm guessing that had something to do with

Arjun Singh
it. So now we know a little bit about who Tim waltz, the man is. But what about Tim waltz, the politician and potential vice president? After the break, I'll sit down with Ryan Grim to unpack Waltz's record and the factors that led to his ascent as the VP nominee. We'll be right back.

Ryan Grim
10 years ago, Iowa and Minnesota were like indistinguishable when it came to forecasting who was going to win their electoral college votes, the governor's office, the Senate seats. Ryan

Arjun Singh
Graham is a political reporter and the co founder of drop site news.

Speaker 4
Not long ago, Minnesota went blue in a trifecta, but just by 1000s of votes, like just the narrowest of margins. Iowa went red at initially, by very, very narrow margins. And in both states, the people that came to power actually governed in a in like a serious way, and enacted their respective agendas. Iowa is like a now, an extreme right test case for right wing policy, and Minnesota is the opposite for progressives like they they drove through with this very slim majority just an extraordinarily progressive agenda. And so they took that mandate and a an old school democratic Blue Dog governor would have said, you know, we need to govern accordingly and not pretend like we have. You know, some giant mandate for progressive change, and we need to ask the Republicans what they want out of this government. And they didn't really do that, you know. Instead, they said, look, we've got power here, and these are the things that we believe are popular. We're going to enact them, and we're going to run on them. And they did that. And it's kind of unique, almost, around the country.

Arjun Singh
Yeah, I think for a lot of Democrats that I talk to, and again, this is people who are moderate, this is people who are progressive. I they just like this idea of standing up for what you're gonna do and fighting for and there's been a lot of criticism from voters, you know, not necessarily consultants or whatnot, that Democrats always seem to go behind what is popular policy. And I'll use Roe v Wade as one example. And yet the leadership can sometimes be so slow to just take the W and say, Look, this is an issue. A lot of people pointed at Biden, I think he came out a week or two after the decision with sort of a first, he had a bland statement, then he had not that charismatic of an address about it. And in Minnesota, I think a lot of people were just jazzed that it's like, look, they passed good policy, and they're not shy about that. They're going to go out and they're going to champion that. Another thing I wonder, with waltz, and I wonder what you think about this, is that it feels like he's kind of this return to this democratic almost prairie populism, if you will. I think Jon Tester from Montana is like that. Russ Feingold, who was another Midwestern Democrat. I mean, Paul Wellstone, who's from Minnesota, has passed away now, but this used to be what felt like a big part of the Democratic Party's base is these rural populace. They had believed in legislation like what Minnesota has passed. They socially were, you know, moderate. Some of them may have been religious, but, you know, it was really speaking to that rural areas. And ever since, really, like Clinton and Obama, the Democratic party feels like it has gone mostly towards college educated voters, people working high finance Silicon Valley. And this feels like kind of he could be a bridge back to there. What do you think? Yes,

Speaker 4
except for the social stuff. So he he also enacted a pretty sweeping kind of social agenda, trans protections. You know, you, you the old Minnesota's party. Interesting, is called Democrat farm labor party, DFL, like, it's, yes, not even the Democratic Party. It's a coalition of these different parties that came together during the populist era. Um, now, obviously it's just the same now, it's just kind of a name at this point. And right, and Republicans are dominant now in the rural areas, and Democrats are dominant in the urban areas. And will walls was kind of one of the last kind of holdouts from that, from that era. But the he passed pretty, you know, he codified Roe v Wade, you know, into in the law and and also past, you know, the generally, it's kind of sweeping social stuff. So, so yes and no, like it. It doesn't actually rely on the kind of social conservatism that that some of the left wing populism does. Like left, you know, some of the like South American, uh, left wing populism comes with, like, pretty, pretty extreme social conservatism, oh, rooted in, like Catholic like, like Raphael, like Ecuador. It's like, anti abortion, for instance, yes, um, but also, but, like, you know, super left wing on economic right,

Arjun Singh
like, free food for people and starvation policies. So,

Speaker 4
so that's that's a different kind of left wing populism that we don't really have that here. It seems like the kind of social liberalism and the and the economic populism goes, you know, with him, at least, goes hand in hand.

Arjun Singh
Well, I want to give a plug to your your book, The squad, AOC hope and the political revolution, because you talk a lot about how identity politics can kind of roil the Democratic Party. And it went from something that had united a lot of progressives and moderates at first to something that started to sort of divide and get in the way when you think about how Waltz is as a campaigner and as a messenger within this sort of moment of identity politics. And you know, I should say, for those listening, you read a lot in the book about how things like identity started to fracture portions of the Democratic coalition. There were fights over identity politics and the way to go about that. But then you have someone like waltz, who's this, you know, for lack of some better descriptors, who's sort of an average, bland looking white man, but he's pushing forward things like trans protection laws. Does that seem like a way to kind of right the ship and unite that coalition again?

Speaker 4
Yeah, and it only really could happen through a. Affirmative it was affirmative action, basically, right? Once Kamala was named, was anointed as the presidential candidate, you had all those memes, you know, that were that were like, it's gonna be a white guy. And right? And Harris was like, pretty clear, like, yeah, like, here's the list. And Whitmer took her name out Raimondo was getting vetted. I don't believe that that was really serious in terms of a vetting. I think it was more of a play for Gina Raimondo to maybe be treasury secretary under Harris. But in general is, yeah, it's a whole bunch of bland white guys that were getting nominated, which is its own form of identity politics.

Arjun Singh
It totally is. Yeah,

Speaker 4
we, don't we? You know, people forget that, that that is like Trump is like, does identity politics just he does different kind of identity politics, or to refer a different identity but, yeah, I think, I do think the Democratic Party was headed in a direction that was going to cost it serious, that was continuing to cost it seriously with with white men, and there are, there are an enormous amount of white men in this country like and a huge, huge portion of them are gettable as Democrats, that they are walls, types of people that they're not. You know, they're, they're bathed in this, the society that we live in. And so they have, and so a lot of them are going to have some of the prejudices that they were raised with around sex, race, gender, you name it. But they're, but they're not lost causes, and and they, and they are good people who you can reach with good values, but you have, but you have to try. And for a while it looked like Democrats were going to stop trying. Like, I don't know the, I don't know if has justice. Democrats ever endorsed a white guy? Like, I don't

Arjun Singh
know anywhere, but I, you know, I think you, what you're speaking to is, I remember seeing

Speaker 4
this Bernie. I guess they endorsed Bernie. Yeah, presidential. Yeah,

Arjun Singh
they did it during me. But what you're talking about is exactly what I saw. There was a clip that was going around where he was talking about JD Vance, but he was talking about his hometown, and he was speaking to Vance's kind of pro natalist People should have children to further the cause of the country, kind of stuff. And what he said was, in his rural hometown of 400 people, the golden rule is, mind your own business. And that seemed to kind of encapsulate everything from, you know, race to LGBTQ rights to basically saying, listen, our hometown rural values are, be whoever you want to be. We're not going to bother you. And, you know, and that was kind of speaking to things that I've heard more out of like, you know, I used to live in Boston, so I'd go into New Hampshire a lot. You hear people in rural New Hampshire who, socially were kind of liberal, but they didn't want to say it exactly like that. They really did cloak it. I shouldn't say cloak, but they really did say it in that kind of language, which is, we respect you to do what you want. We're going to do what we want, and we're we don't think the government should have any role or whatnot over

Speaker 4
this, as long as you're not as long as you're not hurting anybody, and you're not bothering me exactly and none of my business.

Arjun Singh
And I think that that is something that Walt is a messenger has been able to do very well in a way that a lot of the more left and progressive Democrats have sometimes not been able to thread that needle quite in that. That sense, one issue I want to talk a lot about is Israel. I know with Josh Shapiro, there was a lot of concern, in some cases, anger, over the potential decision that he could become the Vice President, a lot of stuff was coming out there about pro Israel comments that he had done a volunteer service in Israel in high school, and that he had once compared campus protesters to the KKK. Now I want to be very careful with that one, because I know that you just looked at the actual quote itself. Ryan, so could you talk a little bit about what Josh Shapiro said about campus protests, and then, more broadly, Can you unpack some of the criticism Shapiro was getting around Israel in the last couple weeks?

Speaker 4
Yeah. And so this precise quote was in this interview with with Jake Tapper. And if you watch the interview, he's trying to defend the right of protesting in general, certainly,

Speaker 5
students and others have a right to peacefully protest in adherence with university policy and the laws of the city and the states they're in. I think what's important is that we can't allow peaceful protest about a disagreement on policy happening in the Middle East to be an excuse for anti semitism or Islamophobia on these campuses, we can't allow it to be an excuse that puts certain students at risk to be able to go to classes safely or to be able to worship safely,

Unknown Speaker
and Jake's kind of cutting them off.

Speaker 6
How is it out of control? I mean, there are lines everybody. It's a so. Objective. Everybody has their own view. Somebody holds up a sign. I saw one at University of Texas earlier today that's said something about Palestine, and it's a map of all of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, as if that is all Palestine. Does that cross a line? Some Israeli might say, you're saying that Israel shouldn't exist. The key quote that really landed him in a lot of trouble later, and not much later, was students

Speaker 5
shouldn't be blocked from going to campus just because they're Jewish or learning in a classroom, as opposed to being forced online because they're Jewish. It is simply unacceptable. And you know what, we have to query whether or not we would tolerate this. If this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia, making comments about people who are African American in our communities, certainly not condoning that Jake, by any stretch. But I think we have to be careful about setting any kind of double standard here on our campuses. We got to call it out for what it is, and these university leaders have to make sure there is order on their campuses.

Speaker 4
And you and I were talking about this before the program, we actually wouldn't need to query that. I think, yeah, yeah, we just go ahead and say that we're actually not gonna, not gonna tolerate that, although it then it does raise these eight, those ACLU questions about, you know, the right of the Klan to march in Skokie or wherever, while it was, it's like, okay, fine, that's, that's one thing. But the other point that he made in conjunction with this was like, and if the Klan was then like, not letting black people onto campus or letting Jewish people onto campus, then then obviously that goes, be it well beyond this question of speech, even if deplorable speech, right? We don't allow that. And he was, he was speaking about either hypothetical or real situations there, because there were some, there were some situations that seemed to get kind of blown up on social media that then when you looked into them, that wasn't actually what was going on, but there was there was, there were allegations that Jewish students couldn't get into libraries or couldn't get onto campus, and that were being blocked, and that, I think actually everybody agrees, no, that's not okay like that, that that isn't free speech and not defensible for for no matter what your cause is and but the the use of the phrase, you know, KKK outfits, or KKK regalia, in the in the context of these protests, I think just politically, was a mistake. And one of Shapiro's real calling cards is that he's an extremely deaf politician. And, you know, he, I think he should have known that how that would be received by the people who were protesting. The timing was brutal for him, on on multiple, multiple levels, you know, for all the campus protests to be happening right before this and and, and considering how he responded so he he endorsed a bill in the Pennsylvania legislature that would have, like, I think, defunded college campuses that didn't kind of crack down on sufficiently on these, on these protests. Yep. So that combined with this other remark, you know, had people, you know, had people worked up like what, you know, this is like this. This guy seems like an enemy. Is how it is, how it was received. But all you know, it's interesting. This is meta stuff. That is that none of this is about Israel, Palestine, you know, this is about, which is classic American way to talk about global affairs is to make it about us, right? This nothing we have said is touched Gaza yet, you know this is yes, that's true. It's all about inside the US, inside the protest responded to protests on campuses about that. Yeah. So the other brutal timing for him was the Pennsylvania Supreme Court taking up this, you know, this weird murder suicide case involving people that he knew just I think, and I think that was absolutely crushing timing for him. But back on the question of ISRAEL PALESTINE, you know, one thing I do think people missed. I think people were too quick to assume what his position would be, particularly on ISRAEL PALESTINE based on things now I understand why they're upset about what he said about the protesters and endorsing the bill about boycotting the protesters. But the So, like the things that were getting circulated were, I think a 2012 appearance, he made it like an APAC, like an APAC conference, and praising Joe Lieberman, you. Like any Democrat is doing that in 2012 right? And I think in 2014 he's or something around, like some maybe 10 plus years ago, he said something nice about a Netanyahu speech at the you, but at the United Nations, not the one he gave against Obama's wishes, here in the in the US. And then also, when he was in college, they found a paper or some statement that he put out. Maybe it was a college it was a college essay or the college newspaper article or something saying that, like Palestinians are too battle hardened like to make peace, like a kind of a racist thing, which he she said, Look, I was 20, and he kind of distanced himself from but that goes back to the bad luck that he was facing. On the one hand, he's saying that, you know, he's 20 and should be forgiven, you know, for making a racist comment about Palestinians at the same time that he's really like ramping up his outrage at 20 year olds on college campuses.

Arjun Singh
Yeah, that's a very good point. I did not actually think of that kind of contrast over there. But

Speaker 4
I think that what people missed is that this, they assumed too much about a this like service, that this volunteer service that he did in Israel with with the IDF. He puffed it up. He did not volunteer with the IDF. He did a typical thing that you would do at a Hebrew school where they send you to Israel, and you fold clothes and like, Well, yeah, you work on a kibbutz, work in a garden, yeah. And then you puff it up later to say what you did and but but basically, everyone that grows up in in, like, that's a bourbon Jewish community in Philadelphia is going to do that, sure, like that you, you can't, really, I don't think read into that anything about how he's going to govern on Israel Palestine. And I had made the argument that people misunderstood. I think that there was, and there still is, because we haven't heard the last of Shapiro for sure. And in fact, if, if Harris and Walt's lose like he's a front runner, you know, next time around, if Democrats are ever going to break from their current Israel policy. It would take somebody with Shapiro's credibility right to be able to do it. And I think that's, that's a pretty straightforward and obvious point. Yeah, that doesn't mean he's definitely going to do it. Well, it's sort

Arjun Singh
of like how Lyndon B Johnson was the guy to really get civil rights passed through. That's a great example. Yeah, white Texan and someone who had really allied with the racist Democrats earlier in his career. Really, well,

Speaker 4
that's, that's really well put Kennedy was never going to get that through, right? Like, the history is clear on that. Like, that was, that thing was dead. Maybe event like, five years later, something goes through. But yes, very, very good point you need. And people always say that Nixon goes to China, but I think LBJ doing Civil Rights Act is an even is an even better example. And at the time, if anybody would have said that about LBJ in 1960 when JFK was picking him to be his vice president, they would have been just as relentlessly mocked as I was, and I said that about Shapiro, right? And for good reason, because they could point to like this guy drops the N word seven times a day. I mean,

Arjun Singh
he had literally nuked civil rights bill and then watered it down into 1950 just three years

Speaker 4
earlier. Yeah, right. So the people's skepticism would have been warranted, but the forecast would also be like, but like, it's a possibility doesn't mean it's gonna happen, and it required all of the civil rights movement to push him there. Wouldn't he wouldn't have done it on his own. That's absolutely for sure, like, but so the combination of those things, a groundswell of public support, plus his his credibility on the issue. And when I say credibility, it's like people would say, Oh, well, look at this other pro Israel thing he did. It's like, no, no. That's where the credibility comes from, right?

Arjun Singh
It's it's to assuage it's not the critics of Israel that might be a swage. It's the people who are worried that things went too far. And I should say that, I think that in the scope of what happened in the country, that that was a fair concern, if you're someone who wants to get reform on Israel policy, is that maybe the protests were starting to get a bad characterization with you know, your standard fair voter, your suburban parents, who are just watching what's happening on TV in the flip side, though, so

Speaker 4
right, they're not blameless, like, there's obviously stuff you can criticize. Yeah, absolutely

Arjun Singh
on the other side. Tim Wall. Democratic majority for Israel's leader, Mark Melman. He know, he writes that Waltz is a strong pro Israel Democrat. Puts out a statement that seems pretty, pretty happy. And you know, waltz has spoken at APAC conferences. He's met Netanyahu. Do you see a difference between Shapiro and waltz and how they've talked about Israel or its policies? And could waltz potentially be that same messenger, that LBJ style person that can say to moderates, or, you know, people who are uncomfortable with how the far left has gone about Israel, that, listen, there's a real need to reform what's happening. And I should say that's only gonna happen if Kamala Harris actually wants to make a break with Israel. That's another four hour discussion. I'm sure that we could have, but let's say in this hypothetical that Harris is open to it, and now you got to convince everybody else, right?

Speaker 4
And we could cut the four hour conversation down to one minute and be like, she probably doesn't like, yeah, now she's probably not as lockstep as Joe Biden, who had a real ideological locked in position where I think both walls and Harris will be more pragmatic and malleable about it. If it's beneficial to them and to the US interests, then they'll move in that direction. If it's if it's not, then they won't. But I don't think that walls has the same room to maneuver when it comes to when it comes to Israel Palestine, because he's just as vulnerable to, I mean, they, you know, they call Bernie Sanders anti semitic during the who

Arjun Singh
had also gone to a kibbutz in the, I think, the 60s and volunteered, yes,

Speaker 4
yeah, right, exactly, what endeared him was, again, meta stuff, In the sense that, when he was asked during the Minnesota primary about the uncommitted vote, he spoke very warmly of of those organizing and supporting that vote, and said that they needed to be taken seriously, that what they were doing was the right thing, that they were that, that they saw a catastrophe unfolding, and we're working to end it, and we're doing it through the process. So I think that that kind of heartfelt statement kind of overrode a lot of the other very standard kind of democratic stuff that waltz had done on on Israel, Mark Kelly, I thought, was a better example of of a double standard like Kelly, you know, straight up after applauding for Netanyahu, who, who Josh Bureau called the worst leader of all time, he then told reporters that perhaps all the Protesters were funded by Iran. Oh, man. And that just kind of that kind of washed away like it wasn't if, if Shapiro had said the same thing, I think you Oh, it would have

Arjun Singh
been far from Game over. I mean, that That almost seems like a politically damning statement if you were trying to advance anything in democratic politics, you know. And I guess when I look at the enthusiasm for waltz right now, I wonder, you know the I hate sometimes using the term the left, because I think anyone who spent time around quote, unquote, the left realizes that no one knows what the left actually means. You actually have these very disparate groups of people. But in the 2018, AOC kind of era, it felt like you had justice. Democrats, DSA, democratic socialists for America, groups that were really identifying more with an actual left wing ideology seeming to have more clout within progressive politics. The enthusiasm from waltz feels like it's coming more from like the Working Families Party the Elizabeth Warren, you know, the the policy wonk people, who I'm sure would describe themselves as left wing. You could do that conventionally, but I would say probably more progressives, and again, in that vein of an Elizabeth Warren has the progressive, liberal left. If there's a different word you'd like to throw in there, throw it in side of the Democratic Party. Has that morphed in the last several years, and has that kind of been contributing to where you're seeing what is being generalized as quote, left wing enthusiasm for waltz

Speaker 4
Well, I think the expectations of the quote, unquote left are are so diminished that it's that it's much easier for them to get excited now, like, because they expect nothing, and so to get something, I think is that was the reaction that that you're seeing, yeah,

Arjun Singh
like, Oh my god. It actually they did the thing that we want. I know, I got several texts that were basically saying that, like, wow, they actually almost like they were ready to be outraged. Yeah, don't really know what to do today, and they're gonna go grab a sandwich or something. Must be something wrong with this guy? Yeah? Exactly. So. I mean, well, on that note, you know, nobody is perfect, but you know, I want to ask you, Ryan, on like, an ending note, how? How? People should think through some things. So Walt's history as governor, we've talked about the good legislation. There have been some moments. For example, he pushed back on a minimum wage mandate for Uber and Lyft drivers. He did the next year, pass a compromise bill that raised their wages 20% it did some sort of wonky stuff about how much you're getting paid per mile. You know, there's instances where the Mayo Clinic, a hospital in Minnesota, one of his top donors, you know, waltz, had exempted the Mayo Clinic from a nurse staffing bill that had passed the House and Senate. Democrats in the state were a little bit disappointed. For a lot of people that can sometimes come across as, oh, man, is this guy not going to be a fighter? Is he just going where he sees kind of the popular thing happening, someone who, actually, you know, you spend a lot of time covering politics and talking to different politicians. How should kind of a general person think through some of that? Because I, I think it's easy to get into binary sometimes, which is, like, they did all these good things, oh, they did these three bad things, and then it's like, I guess they're not that cool. But, you know, there's a lot more nuance. And in politics, it's actually impressive, if anyone can get through everything that they want to without kind of watering it down. But that's, you know, how I'm sort of reading that. But how do you take that stock and does it influence the way we should consider and think about waltz,

Speaker 4
yeah, I actually thought both of those were pretty defensible. From Walsh, basically Uber and Lyft put a gun to his head and based and said, if you pass this bill, we're out of here. And they had done that in the past. And so then the question is, are they telling the truth? Because, as a governor, if you're responsible for Uber and Lyft leaving like, you're gonna get killed, yeah, absolutely love for

Arjun Singh
Lyft, especially the drivers themselves are gonna go, well, now what are we gonna do? Yeah?

Speaker 4
Also the drivers themselves, because, like, right, most of the drivers were not actively involved in the fight, yeah. But also the passengers who were like, wait a minute, like, like, because a lot of people, that's how they that's, that's all they know now,

Arjun Singh
sure. I mean, it would be politically toxic, in a way, to just get rid of be blamed for the lack of a transportation option in your state, yeah. And

Speaker 4
so he had to decide how serious they were. He ended up deciding they were serious. He blinked. They put the gun down. And to his credit, there, usually what a politician won't do there is they'll say, All right, we're going to come back with a compromised version, and then just nothing ever happens, and the industry wins. And in this case, they did come back with something that you know, went a distance toward raising wages without, you know, driving up the cost so much that people, either people got pissed off or or left an Uber squeezed the trigger on them, then on the other one, like, it's like, it's the mayo, it's the Mayo Clinic. Man, you know, I

Arjun Singh
think it's in a similar vein. It's in a similar vein, it's a big employer. It's symbolically, means a lot to your state. And, you know, again, the way that I thought about that is, it's, it's unsavory, but it's a it's unfortunately, how politics says you've covered at the intercept now drop side, as we've covered at the lever, big money. And, you know, businesses or the Mayo Clinic, in this case, the giant nonprofits that are tax exempt can control a lot of influence in your state, and they, they're aware of that.

Speaker 4
Yeah, right. The bigger Knock, and it's interesting, it's in couple directions, is his response to the George Floyd riots on the on the one hand, you've got the left and, and I, I don't know enough about his response to get into the weeds on it. You'd want to talk to some, I think, Minnesota activists. So I think would be enormously critical. He called out the National Guard at the same time from the right people say that, you know, his refusal to take more drastic action, you know, allowed the protests to go on, you know, far longer than they ever should have, and create a lot more damage and destruction than they than they should have otherwise. And actually, you've, you've seen some centrist Democrats who are kind of begging the people like me and you to attack him for bringing out the National Guard, because then they think a Normie voter will look at him as a, you know, tough, tough governor. You see, you see the, like bizarre, like ricochet politics they're trying to play on that. So it's and he has apologized. He said he said he did a terrible job, basically, so, but what does he mean? Does he mean he should have cracked down more? Does he mean he cracked down too much? Basically, I think he means that he didn't crack down enough, so that that's, you know, there's that, there's a lot of room for criticism there, but you. It's interesting that you see it coming from both the left and the right, and they can't, they can't, in some ways, they can't both be correct. Like, you can't be Yeah,

Arjun Singh
no, you can't, yeah. It's, it's a funny dichotomy, but it does, I think, speak to that. You know, overall, I think the heart of the question a lot of people on the left progresses really, a lot of people just observing, we're kind of wondering is, is this guy the real deal? And in many cases, it does seem like he has advanced this legislation. He has pushed for this legislation. Is that a fair read? Do you think?

Speaker 4
Yeah, no, I think he's the real deal. I think to have a that slim of a majority and to push for that progressive of an agenda to get through and to get it done is extremely unusual among Democratic politicians. Well, Ryan,

Arjun Singh
thanks so much for taking the time the website is drop site news. I encourage everyone listening to subscribe. If you haven't already subscribed, thanks for taking the time out of your day and chatting with me. Thanks, man. Really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to another episode of lever time. This episode was produced by me Arjun sang with editing support from Joel Warner. Our theme music was composed by Nick Campbell. We'll be back later this week with another episode of lever time you.