What happens to Tim Walz’s seat if he gets elected vice president

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) might wind up with a new job next year after being tapped to join Vice President Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket.

Walz won’t have to leave office straight away as he hits the road with Harris to run against former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). He will have to balance his duties as governor and a vice presidential candidate the same way Harris had to split her time between the Senate and the campaign trail in 2020.

When Harris was elected vice president in 2020, she had to resign from her U.S. Senate seat representing California, allowing Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to appoint her replacement, now-Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA).

Here is what would happen to the governorship in Minnesota if Walz is elected vice president.

What would Walz be leaving?

Walz, a two-term governor in Minnesota, was reelected to his current term in November 2022, with the actual term beginning on Jan. 2, 2023. His term will end on Jan. 4, 2027, when the winner of the 2026 gubernatorial election is sworn into office in the North Star State.

What happens to his office?

The Minnesota Constitution stipulates that when a vacancy occurs in the governorship “from any cause,” the lieutenant governor is elevated to governor, and the president of the state Senate is elevated to lieutenant governor for the remainder of the term.

Who would replace him?

If Walz is elected vice president and resigns from the governorship, Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan will become governor, and Democratic state Senate President Bobby Joe Champion will become lieutenant governor.

Flanagan has served as lieutenant governor since January 2019 after being elected as part of the ticket alongside Walz. She is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and is touted as being the highest-ranking Native American woman in elected executive office in the country. If she is elevated to the governorship, she will become the first Native American woman governor in the state’s and country’s history.

The lieutenant governor began her political career by serving on the Minneapolis Board of Education from 2005 through 2009. She was later elected to the state House of Representatives and served from 2015 until taking the job as lieutenant governor in 2019.

With Harris’s selection of Walz as her vice presidential nominee, he became the first politician representing Minnesota to appear on a major-party ticket since former Vice President Walter Mondale ran as the Democratic Party’s nominee in 1984.

With the selection on Tuesday, both major-party tickets are set, with the Republican and Democratic parties picking vice presidential candidates from the Midwest.