Formed by Nebraska small towns, Tim Walz brings unconventional background to race

BUTTE, NEB. – When Tim Walz was a sophomore in high school, his family moved from a small town in the scenic Sandhills of north-central Nebraska to this even smaller town 100 miles to the east.

The family was in a bad way. Walz's father, the school superintendent in Valentine, Neb., had been diagnosed with lung cancer. They wanted to be closer to relatives in Butte, a farm town of more than 500 people that has since dwindled to about half that.

Even in those difficult times, Walz's uncle Jerome Reiman saw a promising young man: a good athlete who played every sport and excelled in football. A quiet, curious, intelligent boy whose values seemed grounded in small-town Nebraska. But a potential vice president?

"I was surprised to see him last night, throwing his hands up in the air," Reiman, an 84-year-old retired farmer, said Wednesday, the day after the rally in Philadelphia where Walz made his national debut as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate.

In the small Nebraska towns where Walz grew up and later taught high school, relatives, neighbors, classmates, old friends and students are reminiscing about the Tim or Mr. Walz they knew. High school yearbooks are being pulled out, old newspaper clippings shared and tales of the former teacher posted on Facebook. The Minnesota governor spent half of his life in the Cornhusker State, and the Harris-Walz campaign is eagerly leaning into those Nebraska roots as they seek rural voters' support.

In his first campaign video, Walz said he's ready to fight for the "values I learned in Nebraska." Several people who grew up with him said those include hard work, caring for neighbors and getting along with people who have different interests, beliefs or economic backgrounds.

"We learned how to be good and kind to others and developed friendships with so many people so different from us," said Scott Humpal, one of the 24 students who graduated with Walz from Butte High School in 1982. "It was not uncommon to be in a car full of guys, one was on welfare and food stamps while the other was wearing the latest expensive Nike shoes."

A deeply conservative community

In Butte, the vast majority of people have different beliefs from the blue-state governor who has pushed a progressive policy agenda in Minnesota.

The village is the seat of a county where Donald Trump won 87% of the vote in 2020. It's a place where the two gas pumps at the gas station are analog, with the price and gallons spinning in clock-face style, and where scores of people set up tables on the main street on a blazing-hot Wednesday night last week for the weekly Butte Town Night.

Kids devoured cotton candy and homemade lemon ice cream. Women sold cookies and jellies and vegetables. Students from nearby Boyd County Butte Elementary offered homemade slime and paper ornaments. A giant "TRUMP 2024″ flag flew in a grassy lot next to the community center.

Many Trump fans here expressed a mix of feelings: No way would they vote for Walz, but nice to see a hometown kid on the national stage. They hoped he could help give voice to a small-town America that has long felt overlooked.

In the rural communities where Walz still has relatives, few were overtly critical of the governor.

Some longtime Republicans who know his family said they are considering voting for the Democrat this year. Dick Jeffers, who lives in Valentine, the town 100 miles to the west where Walz grew up before the family moved to Butte, served on the school board when Walz's father was superintendent there and was a pallbearer at his funeral. He called the governor a "copyright" of his dad.

"He's straightforward," Jeffers said. "I'll probably end up voting Democrat. Don't tell my wife! ... [But] I know the family. If it came to him, his decisions would come from a good place."

Dorothy Boes, a 77-year-old retired special education teacher from Bonesteel, S.D., lives 20 minutes north of Butte. She's in a coffee group with Walz's mom, Darlene, who still lives in the community and enjoys planting flowers and playing games like Mexican Train dominoes with friends. Friends described Darlene as sweet and energetic, a rare Democratic activist there who has been involved in the local county party.

Boes, a lifelong Republican, said they generally don't talk politics — that's the way in this small town — and while she wasn't certain she'll vote for a Harris-Walz ticket, she surprised even herself that she was considering it.

"I'd vote for him in a minute; I would," Boes said. "They're decent people. For the longest time leading up to this election, I thought I wasn't going to vote. Forget it. I was so sick of all the fighting."

Next to her, a conservative friend who declined to give her name just shook her head: "A lot of prayers, a lot of prayers."

Looking beyond Nebraska

Born in West Point on the eastern edge of Nebraska, Walz was mostly raised in Valentine a few miles from Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge. It was the type of town where you could bike down the street and always run into kids to play baseball or football, said Pat Donovan, who grew up there playing sports with Walz. Donovan said the now-governor seemed to get along with everyone.

It's also a "cowboy town," as locals say, where Young's Western Wear takes up nearly a block of Main Street. Cherry County, where Valentine is located, is larger than Connecticut but has about 6,000 people in its 6,000 square miles — and 140,000 breeding cows, more than any county in the United States. The Sandhills region upends Nebraska's pancake-flat stereotype; grass-covered dunes rise and fall while never-ending skies loom over vast grasslands of grazing cattle. Valentine has a thriving motel industry welcoming bikers who stop here en route to Sturgis, S.D., or tourists on golf outings or canoe trips down the Niobrara River.

At the Valentine Livestock Auction last week, a John Deere tractor parked out front displayed a sign and flag reading, "GOD GUNS AND TRUMP."

Brogan Arendt, a field representative for the auction, said he doesn't pay much attention to the news. A longtime customer came in the day Walz was announced and told him Harris' pick was from this small town.

"Did you say a Democrat?" Arendt replied. "Well, that's something else, I guess."

Brad Rodgers, the veterinarian caring for cows at the auction, went to middle school with Walz in the 1970s. He described politics there as a libertarian brand of Republicanism: "Just leave us alone. We're ranchers. We want the least amount of regulations."

He said he believes Walz's Midwestern folksiness merely serves to soften too-liberal policies.

"I think he's using that as a crutch, or maybe a way to get into Middle America and try to relate to some small-town people, maybe some independents," Rodgers said. "I just don't see where any of [Walz's progressive politics] came from, being raised in this town."

Growing up, Walz has said, he spent summers working on Everett Brown's ranch "working cattle, building fence, putting up hay." Brown's son declined to comment for this story, saying he doesn't trust the media.

Even in those early years, Walz was looking beyond rural Nebraska. During a speech last month at an Esri User Conference in San Diego, he talked about how, at 14, he would return to the bunkhouse where the ranch hands played cards, look through boxes of old National Geographic magazines and dream of faraway places.

Two days after his 17th birthday, his father, a Korean War veteran, picked him up from track practice and took him to sign up for the Army National Guard. He did basic training the summer after his junior year of high school and ended up serving 24 years in the Guard.

After spending time in Texas and Arkansas following his father's death, he returned to Nebraska for college, using his GI Bill to attend Chadron State College a couple hours west of Valentine. This year, about 350 students graduated from the small college in the Pine Ridge region near the South Dakota border.

When college graduation came, Walz had a choice between a conventional job offer or flying to the other side of the world to join a group of Americans teaching in China, he said during a commencement speech at his alma mater a decade ago. Walz chose the unconventional path, arriving in the southern coastal province of Guangdong at a moment of social upheaval for the country. It was 1989, the year of the protests and massacre in Tiananmen Square.

"That door didn't just lead to China. It led to a lifetime of doors that continue to present themselves in choices that can be made," the then-congressman told the Chadron graduates. He closed the speech by telling the crowd, "You don't inherit the future. You make it to what you choose. Choose well. Choose boldly, but above all else, choose without regret."

Students, coaches recall 'Mr. Positive'

Walz brought stories from his time in China and the military into the classroom when he returned to Nebraska to teach in the blue-collar railroad town of Alliance, then home to almost 10,000 people in Nebraska's panhandle.

He met his future wife, Gwen, there. Walz taught geography and was an assistant coach for the football and basketball teams. She taught English and was the cheerleading adviser. The couple worked together to organize student trips to China in the early 1990s.

Walz fit "like an old shoe" into Alliance's tight-knit coaching staff, said Rocky Almond, who was the head basketball coach. His daughter was the flower girl at the Walzes' wedding, and another coach's son was the ringbearer.

"He just brought the energy every day; that's what we loved about him," said Almond, who also coached football with Walz. "He was just Mr. Positive; he didn't have bad things to say about kids. He understood what it took to motivate kids."

As a quarterback at Alliance High School, Losson White also saw Walz as consistently positive and someone who had a lot of trust in his students. White recalled driving a "clunker" and admiring Walz's sports car. One day at practice, he asked if he could borrow it to take his date to the homecoming dance. Walz readily handed over the keys.

Walz wasn't an easy teacher, but he was a popular one who was always thinking about how to get kids to connect with the material, said Heath Tuttle,who student-taught in his classroom. From Walz, he learned the value of identifying the one or two students who could change a class' tone and getting those natural leaders engaged.

"He had high expectations and [students] did everything they could to meet them, and I felt the same way eventually as a student teacher," Tuttle said. "I walked away from there wanting to be as good of a teacher as he was."

While Walz was teaching at Alliance, he was pulled over for driving more than 40 mph over the speed limit and failed a sobriety test. He later pleaded guilty to reckless driving. He no longer drinks alcohol and told the Star Tribune in an interview years later that it was a gut-check moment.

"He owned it, and I think that's what a person of integrity does," said Jeff Tomlin, who was Alliance's head football coach at the time. "He responded in a positive way as far as not letting it define him. He took it and made himself better, and that's the most anybody can do."

Messages about "Mr. Walz" have been flying among Alliance's former students and teachers since Harris' announcement. But Tomlin said he's not surprised by the pick. He said he believes Walz has an "it factor."

"Tim had a rare ability," Tomlin said, "to be able to connect with all kinds of different people from all walks of life."