(The Center Square) – Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate. Both candidates have faced criticism for their handling of police issues.
After replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, Harris immediately took fire for resurfaced videos where she praised the “defund the police” movement.
In those videos, Harris talked about redirecting funds from police to social services in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody and the ensuing riots that left small businesses and even the police station burned down.
But Walz was governor of Minnesota when the city was burned and filled with rioters after Floyd’s death. Walz was slow to activate the National Guard as the city burned, even after Minneapolis officials asked for it.
The Minnesota Senate’s Joint Transportation and Judiciary and Public Safety Committee released a report in October 2020 detailing what went wrong in Minneapolis, including Walz’ role.
The report said Walz underestimated the riots, was slow to address them and blamed local law enforcement and officials.
“Governor Walz had the ability and duty to use force and law enforcement to stop criminal violence, but he did not,” the report said “Governor Walz was not willing to do what was necessary to stop the rioting right away because he was having a philosophical debate about whether the use of force should be used to stop violence.”
Those riots and Floyd’s death kicked off a string of looting and rioting in cities around the country.
“Governor Walz and Kamala Harris are two peas in a left-wing ideological pod,” Marc Ellinger, chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association, told The Center Square. “Vice President Harris urged Democrats in 2020 to help bail out Walz’s violent rioters in Minneapolis, so it makes sense they would team up again to keep pushing their radical, soft-on-crime agenda that has resulted in a crime wave across the country.”
“The American people do not want what Tim Walz allowed to happen in Minneapolis coming to their communities,” he added
Harris is roughly tied in the polls with her opponent, former President Donald Trump, who will likely join Republicans in attacking the Democratic ticket for its handling of the BLM riots.
Walz has also taken fire for Minnesota’s role as a sanctuary state amid an illegal immigration crisis and his stance on transgender surgeries for youth, which is further left than most of the nation.
“In 2021, Minnesotans were roughly five times more likely to move to Florida than vice versa,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They were fleeing a state that, under Gov. Tim Walz, turned its back on law and order, increased taxes, and imposed unscientific coronavirus restrictions, harming children and destroying businesses. Walz is an unbridled leftist, an Ilhan Omar-style Democrat that puts ideology above all else.”
