The Trumpian Right is calling Walz a ‘radical.’ But what is his actual track record?
Plus, as Heartland primaries come to a close, a 2020 election denier seeks reelection.
In an interview with Fox and Friends today, former President Donald Trump offered up his typical, rambling insight into the state of the presidential race. The GOP’s leader had been invited on the network’s flagship show in light of Vice President Kamala Harris announcing her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“What he's doing, he wants, if you look at his record, with no walls, no security, let everybody in, he's worse than they are. Nobody knew how radical left she was, but he's a smarter version of her. If you want to know the truth, he's probably about the same as Bernie Sanders, he's probably more so than Bernie Sanders,” Trump said on-air.
“But this is, there's never been a ticket like this. This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), quickly branded Walz as a far-left ideologue.
"Kamala Harris is running as a San Francisco liberal," Vance said shortly after Walz’s inclusion on the ballot was announced. "She has governed as a San Francisco liberal, and she's chosen a running mate who will be a San Francisco-style liberal."
Indeed, such red-baiting has long been a key tactic of the Republican Party since the days of McCarthy, and it’s not exactly surprising to see the new vice presidential pick tarred as some kind of neo-Marxist. If Harris had selected a wooden plank with a face drawn on it, right-wing leaders and pundits would still call it the next Che Guevara.
But peering past the distorted, conservative looking glass finds that they may be on to something — to a degree. Walz’s tenure as governor has been colored by an extremely diligent state legislature that put forward a collection of bills that met the needs of working people.
As the American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper pointed out in his dispatch from the Gopher State last year, Walz and a Democratic-controlled House and Senate successfully implemented a series of bog-standard, yet popular policies: “legalization of recreational marijuana, automatic voter registration, restoration of voting rights to felons, gun control measures, a huge education overhaul, making prison calls free, and a law allowing unauthorized immigrants to get driver’s licenses.”
All this was implemented, mind you, with the kind of ultra-slim majority that is commonplace in our national legislature.
But on labor — a socioeconomic issue that the country’s Left has been especially preoccupied with since the Rise of Trump — Walz and his allies made sure worker’s rights were a top priority by curbing wage theft, banning non-compete clauses, creating new safety standards for warehouse employees and mandating all employers provide parental and medical leave by 2026.
All this suggests that the Harris-Walz coalition could build the kind of pro-labor agenda that Bernie Sanders acolytes called for in 2016 and 2020 — one that would keep the party from hemorrhaging the sorts of blue-collar voters that once made up the backbone of the New Deal era. That could partially explain why Trump and Vance are on the offensive when it comes to Walz; the dealignment of the working class was something that could work in their favor.
The irony is that Walz was never really a radical to begin with. Rather, the former school teacher and union member was simply responding to the demands of his constituency; a constituency that was hungry not for culture war but for a sensible agenda that prioritized low-to-middle-income households.
And should the next Democratic administration copy some of Walz’s playbook, it might be enough to finally extinguish the radically anti-social politics of the MAGA movement.
Avid 2020 election denier Jamie Thompson seeks Michigan House reelection
By Clare Olson
Michigan state Rep. Jamie Thompson (R-Brownstown) has a history of rejecting the results of the 2020 presidential election and spreading misinformation, even to this day. The incumbent is seeking reelection in Michigan’s 28th House District.
Thompson was one of the many Michigan lawmakers who vocally rejected President Joe Biden’s victory, naming election integrity one of her main campaign issues.
She has also been a representative of Michigan Leadership Group, a nonprofit organization that has posted about election fraud on multiple occasions, saying any lawmaker who “fails to initiate a forensic audit and then send electors to DC could be, and WILL BE, individually sued.” The group’s Facebook account also posted an article claiming “voter fraud happened.”
She has also had involvement with an election-denying group called Patriot Approved. The group attempted to recruit 5,000 Republican poll workers “to ensure honest elections in 2022.”
In response to a post on X by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) regarding the state’s election results, Thompson made unfounded claims about the late Republican election official William Hartmann.
“It’s too bad that then Board of Canvasser Bill Hartman is deceased and unable to share his recollection of the events of that night. Because he shared with me the threats against his life and the fact that he was pressured to certify an election he was not comfortable certifying,” Thompson wrote in a post on X in December 2023, two years after Hartmann died.
Hartmann and another Republican canvasser, Monica Palmer, initially refused to certify the election results in Wayne County following the election. According to The New York Times, they “were concerned about small discrepancies between the number of votes cast in some precincts and the number of people precinct officials recorded as having voted.”
Both Hartmann and Palmer did eventually vote to certify the ballots, but they also demanded the results be audited. Biden beat Trump by over 330,000 votes in Wayne County, a margin of victory that would not have been affected by the few hundred disputed votes that the Republican members pointed out.
Regardless, all claims of fraud in the state were debunked and proven false following an investigation by the state’s Senate Oversight Committee in June 2021.
“After innumerable hours over many months, watching, listening, and reading both in-person testimony and various other accounts, I am confident in asserting that the results of the November 2020 General Election in Michigan were accurately represented by the certified and audited results,” Republican state Sen. Ed McBroom said in a statement.
Thompson is still seen to be rejecting the results as recently as last month. She reposted an article on Facebook about a lawsuit brought by former President Donald Trump against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) over allowing certain federal offices to be used as voter registration locations.
In a statement, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley referred to this action as an attempt to “manipulate our country’s most important election.”