When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz introduced himself at a rally Tuesday night — his first public appearance since becoming Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ running mate — he imparted a bit of Midwestern wisdom to the Philadelphia crowd.
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choice that they make,” he said. “Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”
Walz, a former high school teacher, football coach and military veteran, has upheld these values of personal freedom as a core tenet during his two stints as governor, signing laws to protect access to gender-affirming care and abortion, to ban conversion therapy and to block libraries from banning books that include LGBTQ+ characters.
Last year, Walz issued an executive order to safeguard trans people’s ability to receive gender-affirming care. The order protected out-of-state patients, their families and medical providers from being punished by other states for seeking that care. He did so just as a slew of nearby Republican-led states, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa, enacted laws banning gender-affirming care for minors.
Soon after, Walz signed a law with broad protections that supporters said would make Minnesota a “trans refuge.” The legislation barred the use of subpoenas to investigate doctors providing gender-affirming care for their patients. It also allowed Minnesota courts to assert “temporary emergency jurisdiction” if a minor has come from another state to obtain gender-affirming care.
Together, these policies have made Minnesota an attractive option for many families of transgender youth and other LGBTQ+ families that are living in other states. In 2023, a record number of bills were introduced barring access to gender-affirming care for minors and the ability of trans kids to participate in school sports or use school restrooms and facilities because of their gender identity.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump quipped on Fox News on Wednesday morning that Walz is “very heavy into transgender. Anything transgender he thinks is great.” By contrast, as president, Trump restricted the rights of transgender people, rolling back much of the progress made during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Trump barred trans people from the military and axed protections against discrimination in federal health care programs. If elected, Trump has vowed to take his restrictions even further and bar federal agencies from “promoting” the concept of gender transition. In Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a second Trump presidency, former Trump officials have outlined several policies that would affect LGBTQ+ people, including rolling back President Joe Biden’s trans-inclusive Title IX protections and erasing gender identity and sexual orientation from all federal anti-discrimination policies.
After Harris announced that Walz was her running mate, Trump’s campaign manager, Karoline Leavitt, criticized Walz’s “radical policies,” such as legislation he signed last year to make pads and tampons available to “all menstruating students” in school restrooms, regardless of gender.
“[The Walzes] modeled values of inclusivity and respect. That helped not just me ― I was bullied in high school ― but also I think the bully…. It showed the bully a better path forward.”
– Jacob Reitan, a former student at Mankato West High School
Republican critics have taken offense with that, branding Walz with a new nickname: Tampon Tim. But thus far, many Democrats are embracing the new moniker and signaling their support for Walz’s policies to make tampons and menstrual pads more accessible and affordable for students.
Walz’s support of the LGBTQ+ community predates his tenure as governor. In 1999, as a social studies teacher and high school football coach, he was also the faculty adviser for the first Gay Straight Alliance at Mankato West High School in Mankata, Minnesota.
Jacob Reitan, a former student, remembers coming out to Gwen Walz, Tim’s wife.
“Both Tim and Gwen were incredibly supportive of their gay students,” Reitan told Jen Psaki on MSNBC. “They modeled values of inclusivity and respect. That helped not just me ― I was bullied in high school ― but also I think the bully…. It showed the bully a better path forward.”
“I can think of no one better than Tim Walz to show that better path forward for America,” he added. “We have had with Donald Trump a bully president.”
As governor, Walz has helped uplift many of the efforts of Minnesota’s “queer caucus,” a group of a dozen Democratic state lawmakers who are openly LGBTQ+ ― the greatest number in state history. Last year the caucus tried to pass a trans refuge bill to block the state from enforcing out-of-state court orders to remove children from families who support gender-affirming care.
The caucus was trying to counter efforts from states like Florida, which rushed to pass legislation to give its state courts the ability to temporarily make custody decisions over children (albeit with out-of-state custody orders) who were receiving gender-affirming care in another state. Other states, including Texas, had begun “child abuse” investigations of families that supported their trans kids by allowing gender-affirming care.
But in Minnesota, Democratic Rep. Leigh Finke, the state’s first openly trans lawmaker and leader of the caucus, said she asked Walz’s aides to issue an executive order enshrining the rights she had drafted in the trans refuge bill she was working to pass.
“I cannot imagine the stress that families and individuals go through, but here in Minnesota, we’re going to be a place of refuge to make sure that they feel safe and welcome,” Walz said in a news conference.
At the time of the conference, Walz stood alongside Finke and Hilde Edwards, a 12-year-old transgender girl who had testified in support of the state’s trans refuge bill last year.
Walz spoke about the sweep of anti-trans legislation across the country and asked the crowd to imagine what it looked like as conservative lawmakers signed bills that took away the rights of trans children.
“Imagine what the emotion was in that room, when they did that with absolutely nothing to gain for themselves, not following any factual data and simply using the state apparatus to bring cruelty down on the most innocent amongst us,” he said.
“But in Minnesota we saw this as an opportunity to show our best side,” he added. “This is what it means to show empathy. This is what it means to be welcoming.”