Tim Walz Heads Home to the Minnesota State Fair

The event, a must-stop for politicians through the years, has also been the site of some of the vice-presidential nominee’s most meme-able moments.

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Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, right, with, clockwise from bottom left, Representative Ilhan Omar, Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at the Minnesota State Fair in 2022.

Shortly after Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was tapped by Vice President Kamala Harris to be her running mate, a photo of Mr. Walz at the Minnesota State Fair in 2019 went viral.

He wore a gold University of Minnesota T-shirt, a maroon University of Minnesota hat emblazoned with the Gophers mascot and a smile that his face could barely contain. In his arms was a small, sleeping piglet.

It was peak Midwestern dad energy — one of the regular-guy reasons that Ms. Harris chose him to join the Democratic ticket despite his limited national profile. Over the last few weeks, Mr. Walz has been on a whirlwind tour introducing himself to the rest of the country. He has campaigned before crowds of over 10,000 in battleground states like Wisconsin and Georgia; hosted fund-raisers in California and Maryland; and completed his transformation into a party leader with a rousing speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

But Mr. Walz will need no introduction when he steps back onto the grounds of the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul on Sunday, where he is expected to make a campaign stop.

“Oh, he is?!” asked Keri Huber, an archivist at the fair. To be sure, it was no surprise to her, but she had yet to hear the news because, she explained, she had been on the grounds, working nonstop.

Like other state fairs happening across the nation, the Minnesota State Fair, affectionately known as the Great Minnesota Get Together, has a storied political tradition as a spot to woo voters in a less-scripted forum. Over the years, it has been an opportunity for once and future officeholders to appear, well, normal, while chowing down pronto pups — which, depending on whom you ask, are not so different from corn dogs — and buckets of Sweet Martha’s cookies and posing for photos.

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