'Coach' Walz rallies team at DNC, accepts VP nomination

Tim Walz waves from the stage at people hold signs that say "Coach Walz"

, Hailey Branson-Potts and Faith E. Pinho

Aug. 21, 2024 Updated 9:41 PM PT

CHICAGO — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher raised in rural Nebraska, spoke to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday as he formally accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.

“It’s the honor of my life to accept your nomination for vice president of the United States,” he said. “We’re all here tonight for one beautiful, simple reason: We love this country. ... Thank you for bringing the joy to this fight.”

The speech was a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and formerly little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days earlier, and it was the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.

Walz’s remarks capped a long night in the convention hall, beginning after 8:20 p.m. Pacific time — well out of television’s prime time on the East Coast.

Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.

His remarks focused on his small-town upbringing, and he walked onto the stage to the John Mellencamp song “Small Town” as the crowd chanted, “Coach! Coach! Coach!” He emphasized his time in the Army National Guard, as a public school teacher and as a state-championship-winning football coach.

Walz mentioned Butte, Neb., the tiny town where he graduated from a now-closed high school with 24 other students.

Tim Walz's wife Gwen, left, son Gus and daughter Hope in the crowd

“None of them went to Yale,” he said in a crack aimed at Vance, who graduated from the university.

“But I’ll tell you what,” Walz said. “Growing up in a small town like that, you learn how to take care of each other. That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do. But they’re your neighbors, and you look out for them and they look out for you.”

The speech emphasized Walz’s oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and get revenge on his political enemies.

He was preceded on the stage by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton.

Pelosi focused her short remarks on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win.

She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on Jan. 6. He did.”

Clinton, whose wife, Hillary, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.

“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.

Speaking for the 12th time at a Democratic convention, the former president fired up the party faithful with a folksy, 27-minute speech. Clinton, who turned 78 Monday and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”

It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.

Clinton gave his imprimatur to 59-year-old Harris, who was a young deputy district attorney in Alameda County when he won the White House in 1992.

Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’ job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”

He also called Walz, an avid hunter, “a crack shot” who had “the courage among his rural constituents” to support an assault weapons ban.

The speeches followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”

In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for Jan. 6.”

“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”

The evening also featured a performance by music legend Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground”; and remarks by Indian American actor, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an Instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.

Oprah Winfrey also addressed the convention on Wednesday night. She said of Trump, without saying his name: “We are beyond ridiculous tweets and lies and foolery. These are complicated times, people, and they require adult conversation.”

Walz’s speech focused largely on his biography. He said his former students inspired him to run for Congress in 2005.

“There I was, a 40-something high school teacher with little kids, zero political experience and no money, running in a deep red district,” he said. “But, you know what? Never underestimate a public school teacher. Never.”

Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.

He said that, as a congressman, he regularly worked with Republicans, learning “how to compromise without compromising my values.” As governor, he said, he was proud to fight for the right to abortion and reproductive care.

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make,” he said. “And even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

He also shared his and wife Gwen’s struggles with “the hell that is infertility.” The couple relied upon fertility treatments, and he recalled “the pit in your stomach when the phone would ring and the absolute agony when we heard the treatment hadn’t worked.”

In the audience, his daughter, Hope — her fingernails painted lime green in an ode to the Charli XCX “Brat” album cover that has been linked in countless memes to Harris — held up her hands in a heart shape. His son, Gus, tears on his cheeks, stood and mouthed the words, “That’s my dad.”

Before Walz was first elected to office, he spent 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.

Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.

On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.

The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.

Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.

The party has heartily embraced Walz’s persona — a Midwestern dad who doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which promptly sold out.)

“Who better to take on the price of gas than a guy who could pull over to help change your tire?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota asked the convention crowd before Walz took the stage.

Walz ended his speech as if he were speaking to his high school football players.

“You might not know it,” he said, “but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this: It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense, and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And, boy, do we have the right team.”

Rainey and Pinho reported from Chicago, Branson-Potts from Los Angeles.