Where Tim Walz’s Traditional Values Come From

Missing from a lot of commentary on Walz’s quirky folksy manner has been any serious in-depth treatment of Minnesota’s distinctive political history and Walz as an immigrant from Nebraska, shaped by these traditions. To explain the  Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) party as the most successful left-wing party in U.S. history and Minnesota, the state with the longest unbroken record of voting for Democratic presidents, you have to look at its roots.

The state’s late-19^th-Century waves of immigrants were dominated by Scandinavians and Germans  who brought values reflecting cooperative enterprises, rural self-sufficiency, local communitarian models and a strong sense of justice. These values were reflected in both the dominant immigrant religions, Lutheranism and Catholicism.

In the 1870s, farmers’ and small-town residents protested the power of the railroads and the credit system that forced farmers to sell in a highly unstable market and purchase necessities in a protected one due to high tariffs. This egalitarian conviction that a conspiracy of wealth threatened the republic reflected deep social justice values. These battles were harbingers of the Progressive Era in Minnesota from 1899-1918, and it’s no accident that the Grange, a farmer-led reform movement’s founder, Oliver Kelly, was a Minnesotan. Later, in Minneapolis, the proud and aggressive American Indian Movement was born in 1968. And if Walz is elected, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan will become the nation’s first Native American governor.

By the 1930s, Minnesota had become a hotbed for the convergence of many similar interests of the labor movement and farmers, forming the Farmer-Labor Party, and then the DFL.  In no other state have the populist interests of working populations sustained a state-wide political party into current times. These liberal, often religious, convictions have sustained heroic social justice activism and a preference for human rights when confronting state’s rights and capitalist orthodoxy.

While political control of the legislature by Democrats and Republicans has oscillated over the decades, there have been several seminal periods when, under DFL control, the legislature produced spasms of progressive legislation. Notable was 1972 when the DFL gained control of both houses and the governorship. Called the “Minnesota Miracle” in a book by Tom Berg, he described in detail the legislative production. Among the reforms were  comprehensive ethics and election reform bills, an open meeting “sunshine” law, the first Data Privacy Law, a reorganization of state government, and more. Berg also ascribes these successes as partly due to  efforts by both parties to work collaboratively, long a feature of Minnesota politics (until recently!).

Much of this is intensely personal to me. I was born into a family of Red River Valley farmers and educated in Minnesota. Martin Sabo who was my college roommate was speaker of the Minnesota House during the period described above. We cut our political teeth, as college students, working on the campaigns of national titans like Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.   Humphrey, when mayor of Minneapolis, became certainly the most important white partner in the early Black civil rights movement, against massive odds, and Mondale continued that fight and the expansion of the New Deal. Sabo went on to represent Minneapolis for 14 terms in the House of Representatives, heading up the House Democratic Study Group, a little-remembered entity which formulated progressive policy options for the party.

It is the second notable wave of progressive output in 2023 when the DFL again gained control of all levers of state government and Tim Walz, then governor, helped lead a session that has been much lauded in the national media. The prodigious progressive output included child tax credit, cemented access to abortion, an infrastructure bill, paid family leave, two gun control restrictions, free school lunches for all, cannabis legalization, legal refuge for those obtaining transgender care, and more.

With women again playing a major role in DFL politics, the most racially diverse DFL caucus and Legislature in history, led by House speaker Melissa Hortman and Senate majority leader Kari Dziedzic, did much of the heavy lifting that produced the biggest advance in Minnesota progressive policy since the 1970s. They deserve as much credit as Walz for this breakthrough.

Minnesota continues to rank near the top in voter turnout. It also today continues to rank near the top in most measures of social conditions and economic vitality.

But Walz, with his roots in rural Nebraska (no coincidence given his political orientation), was a good fit for the political landscape that helped produce his successful Minnesota career. Now Minnesota has produced its third Democratic vice presidential candidate in 60 years.

For a former Minnesotan now living in Washington, it has been instructive to note how the further westward migration of the Scandinavian and German wave of immigrants to Seattle helped create a progressive political climate here that closely mirrors my home state. And I’m bloody proud of both!