Tim Walz: The arrest that changed his life – and how it shaped his political career
After Tim Walz was arrested for drink-driving at the age of 31 in 1995, he offered to resign from his teaching job and permanently swapped alcohol for Diet Mountain Dew.
“You have responsibilities to others. You can’t afford to make foolish decisions.”
Those are the words Tim Walz’s wife Gwen said to him after he was arrested for drink-driving at the age of 31.
Now Kamala Harris’s vice president nominee, Mr Walz looks back on this as a defining incident in his life, describing it as a “life-changing” moment.
Mr Walz, now 60 and running to be the Democratic vice president, offered to resign from his teaching job and permanently swapped alcohol for Diet Mountain Dew, he told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis while running for governor of Minnesota in 2018.
23 September 1995
Tim Walz was working as a geography teacher and football coach at a high school in Nebraska when he was stopped by police on 23 September 1995.
He had not long got his teaching degree and met his wife of a year Gwen, who was also a teacher from Minnesota.
He had been watching college football with some friends when he was pulled over going 96mph in a 55mph zone.
According to court documents, the state police officer smelled alcohol on his breath and Mr Walz failed initial breath tests.
He was taken to a nearby hospital for a blood test and booked into Dawes County Jail.
Court documents show he had 0.128% alcohol in his blood, which was over the legal limit of 0.1%.
His lawyer claimed Mr Walz initially thought the police car was chasing him because it came up so quickly behind him and didn’t turn its lights on.
Ultimately Mr Walz took a plea deal and the charge was reduced to reckless driving. He lost his licence and was fined $200 (£152).
‘Real disappointed in himself’
When the case came to court in March 1996, Mr Walz’s defence lawyer said that as a high school teacher and role model to his students, he felt “terrible” and was “real disappointed, I guess, in himself”.
The arrest saw him give up his coaching position – and even offer his resignation to his principal because he “felt so bad”.
His boss convinced him to stay, however, so instead Mr Walz used the experience to warn his pupils of the dangers of drink-driving.
He told the courtroom: “It’s just a dangerous situation. Not just to myself, but to others who aren’t even involved with it.”
Tim Walz’s drink-driving arrest re-emerged in the media soon after Kamala Harris announced he was going to be her running mate this year.
But there was some confusion over false claims he wasn’t over the limit.
When he was running for Congress in 2006, his campaign spokesperson told a local news outlet in Minnesota he was not drunk that night in 1995.
She said of the decision to reduce the charge to reckless driving: “The DUI charge was dropped for a reason: It wasn’t true.”
She claimed that hearing loss he suffered while with his National Guard artillery unit may have been the reason he failed sobriety tests.
There were also false reports given by his team that he had been allowed to drive himself to the police station – where he was later allowed to leave of his own accord.
Court documents have since shown no mention of any hearing issues – and that he was driven to Dawes County Jail by officers.
Speaking to his local newspaper in the run-up to his 2018 election as governor, Mr Walz reflected on how his run-in with the law changed his perspective.
His father, a school administrator, died when he was 19.
In an interview, he said it left him feeling as though his life had been “ripped up” and, throwing caution to the wind, saw him take unnecessary risks.
He had joined the National Guard two years before, but instead of pursuing a military career, he went to China. It was only the second time ever he had got on a plane. He spent a year teaching there, which coincided with the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
On his return to the US he moved from state to state – Nebraska to Texas to Arkansas – where he ended up working in a factory that made beds for tanning salons.
Bridging divides
He returned to Nebraska, took up his first US teaching post and a full-time job with the National Guard, with football coaching on the side.
Before long he started dating his wife, whom he married in 1994. They have two children – daughter Hope who was born in 2001 and son Gus born in 2006.
After the couple moved back to Minnesota, Mr Walz swapped the National Guard, where he had progressed to command sergeant major by the time he left in 2005, with politics.
That year he ran for Congress in the Republican-leaning 1st district of Minnesota.
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During the campaign, he established himself as someone who could build bridges – in a traditionally Democrat state surrounded by the Republican rural heartlands of Wisconsin and Michigan.
He gave an example of when he was still a teacher in 1999 – and one of his pupils wanted to start a gay-straight alliance – just three years after President Bill Clinton had signed the Defence of Marriage Act, effectively banning same-sex marriage.
In his National Guard days, he had seen LGBT people threatened with discharge, and at school, pupils bullied by their peers for their sexuality.
Seeing the potential to cut through to its critics, Mr Walz became the group’s faculty adviser.
He told a newspaper interview: “It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married.”
After beating the Republican incumbent to take his House seat in 2007, he stayed there for 12 years, before successfully running for governor in 2018.
When Kamala Harris announced him as her VP pick this year, she said: “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his.”
