Tim Walz’s complicated record on crime comes back to haunt him

Vice President Kamala Harris’s decision to pick the Minnesota governor as her running mate on Tuesday renewed criticisms from Republicans about Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) record on crime after his state spawned nationwide riots, looting, and calls to defund the police in 2020.

Minnesota saw an alarming crime wave beginning in 2018 that surged through 2021, dipped slightly in 2022, and then dipped again in 2023, according to preliminary state data released this year. Meanwhile, Walz, who has been in office since 2019, has had mixed responses to law enforcement in his state.

While he did not endorse the defund the police movement that began in 2020, he expressed sympathy for rioters who ravaged Minneapolis, destroying small businesses and burning dozens of buildings to the ground, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.

His reputation on crime has largely been dominated in the public eye by his hesitant response to the riots, which proved to have a devastating impact on the most populous city in his state.

He has since signed multiple criminal justice reform bills into law, some that have been pushed by Democrats and one that was bipartisan.

When Harris revealed she had chosen Walz, Republicans jumped at the chance to remind the public of the mayhem of 2020. Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), said, “Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis.”

In his debut speech as Harris’s running mate, Walz deflected on his record on crime and sought to turn the spotlight on Trump’s felony convictions. 

“Make no mistake violent crime was up under Donald Trump,” Walz said at a rally Tuesday in Philadelphia with Harris. “And that’s not even counting the crimes he committed.

Below is a look at Walz’s record and the renewed scrutiny he is facing for it.

Walz’s response to crime

During his governorship, Walz’s harshest crime-related criticism has been that he failed to respond in a timely manner to the destructive riots that wreaked havoc on parts of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and other cities after police officer Derek Chauvin was captured on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck.

A tense three days of shocking displays of arson, vandalism, violence, and looting, all in the name of racial justice, passed before Walz activated the National Guard to respond.

A joint committee report from the Minnesota Senate found that Walz waited 18 hours after the Minneapolis mayor requested the governor’s assistance to respond with National Guard support.

“Governor Walz had the ability and duty to use force and law enforcement to stop criminal violence, but he did not,” the senators stated in the report.

They added that 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.”

During the critical 18 hours where Walz remained in a state of indecision, many buildings went up in flames, including a police precinct.

Walz later described the destruction as the “manifestation” of “generations of pain” during a press conference. The rioters inflicted damage on roughly 1,500 buildings in urban regions of Minnesota during the few days after Floyd died, and dozens were burned completely to the ground by arsonists, according to the Star Tribune. Copycat riots quickly cropped up in other parts of the country.

One controversy that Harris has long taken heat for is her decision in 2020 to elevate the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a group that opposes cash bail and bailed out suspects regardless of the crimes they were accused of committing. The group posted bail in 2020 for defendants accused of egregious crimes, including sexual assault of an 8-year-old and a stabbing incident.

While Harris called for donations for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, Walz in 2019 appointed its then-executive director, Tonja Honsey, to the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. The commission is a 13-member panel that maintains a sentencing framework for judges in the state to refer to when penalizing criminals.

In terms of legislation, after the riots, Walz worked with a divided state government to pass a police reform bill that placed some restrictions on police. The bill’s reception was “tepid” across the political spectrum, according to Courthouse News.

Last year, Walz signed a Democratic-led bill that extended voting rights to tens of thousands of felons.

GOP predicts ‘four more years of lawlessness’ if Walz wins

Democratic and Republican reactions to Harris choosing Walz have appeared positive, with Democrats celebrating someone they characterize as a wholesome Midwesterner who will usher in support in key swing states and Republicans celebrating someone they believe will hurt Harris’s chances of winning. Somewhere in the middle is a mix of people who have found the choice unwise because of Walz’s less moderate and more left-wing views on issues from Israel to transgenderism.

Republicans, for their part, immediately latched on to the 2020 riot episodes and ensured that Walz’s record from that time would come back to haunt him as crime persists as a political flashpoint heading into the election.

Accounts on social media with massive followings shared visuals of scenes of buildings-turned-infernos and unchecked looting in Minnesota while Walz was in office.

Among the statements Trump made was a post on social media that simply said in all capital letters, “Thank you!”

Vance, the GOP vice presidential nominee, called Harris and Walz a “tag team” for their reactions to the riots.

“They make an interesting tag team because of course Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and then the few who got caught, Kamala Harris bailed them out of jail,” Vance said in a television interview.

Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project and a staunch Trump ally, told the Washington Examiner he viewed Walz as a “radical liberal disguised as a Midwesterner who is unfit to be the Vice President of the United States.”

“At the same time that Kamala Harris was fundraising for the Minnesota Freedom Fund that contributed to the release of violent criminals, Governor Walz was enabling these same criminals to commit more violent offenses,” Davis said. “A Harris-Walz administration is an open invitation for four more years of lawlessness, riots, and crime across America.”