DES MOINES, Iowa — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stood before hundreds of Iowans on Friday and admitted he doesn’t have all the answers about issues facing the country.
“If I did, we wouldn’t be in this goddamn mess,” Walz said.
Walz is back on the road to talk to voters, but he’s no longer a vice presidential candidate. He isn’t any kind of candidate, at least not for now.
Walz is reemerging after last year’s election loss, granting interviews to national media and speaking to hundreds attending the Montana Democratic Party’s annual dinner earlier this month.
Now, he’s kicking off a tour of town halls in competitive congressional districts represented by Republicans, launched by a post on social media in response to guidance from House Speaker Mike Johnson that GOP representatives skip out on town halls, saying demonstrations outside of them were the work of “professional protesters.”
“There’s a responsibility in this time of chaos where elected officials need to hear what people are irritated about,” Walz said. “And I would argue that Democratic officials should hear the primal scream that’s coming from America and do something.”
Walz said he wasn’t there to personally attack U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn, whose district includes the high school auditorium that nearly 1,000 people filled on Friday. But Walz called on Nunn to answer questions in public. Nunn won reelection in Iowa’s 3rd congressional district by about 4 percentage points in 2024, a margin of just under 16,000 voters.
The Iowa Democratic Party got Walz’s call Monday evening and got to work planning the event Tuesday, said Paige Godden, the state party’s communications director.
The crowd gave Walz a standing ovation. Many were wearing shirts with messages of political activism. A schoolteacher, a high school senior and a VA medical center worker asked Walz questions about health care, financial aid and funding for veterans.
Mike Suggett of Pleasant Hill, just east of Des Moines, is a retired schoolteacher who said he taught Nunn in junior high school. He’s written to the lawmaker but said he gets “canned form letters” in return. Suggett said Nunn is “too much of a coward” to show up.
“We’d much prefer to hear from the people who represent us,” Suggett said.
In an emailed statement to The Associated Press, Nunn said he’s held “hundreds of listening sessions” to hear directly from Iowans and is delivering on the change “Iowans voted for in November.”
“While out-of-state Democrats hold fundraisers disguised as forums, we’re focused on real results,” he said.
Walz stopped in Iowa several times in 2023 as a surrogate for then-President Joe Biden, floating around the state fair, fundraising for local Democrats and holding media availabilities to contrast Biden with the Republican candidates campaigning in the run-up to Iowa’s GOP caucuses.
He goes Saturday to Nebraska, where he grew up, with tentative stops to follow in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio. The focus on Midwest neighbors and states in the Rust Belt isn’t a coincidence — many of them are places Walz didn’t visit during last year’s shortened campaign after Biden dropped out and made way for Vice President Kamala Harris atop the Democratic ticket.
Walz passed on running for Senate next year but could be a contender for the 2028 presidential nomination.
On 2024’s outcome, Walz said Democrats “need to acknowledge” that some voters didn’t see a difference between the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets and that the Democrats’ message on issues like immigration and Social Security didn’t resonate. He said he’s listening to learn why.
Andrea Smith, a veteran, and her 19-year-old daughter, Liberty, said they were already going to be in Des Moines — about 120 miles from home in West Branch — to rally for veteran’s rights, and they decided to stay to see Walz.
“We related a lot to him,” Liberty Smith said. “He felt real during the election season.”
Showing up to the Walz event was May Dehaan’s way of trying to get Nunn to notice that his constituents are frustrated. She wore a shirt that read: “This is not normal.”
“Obviously, he’s not listening to his constituents. He’s following the GOP talking points.” said Dehaan, a retired interior designer from suburban Clive, who has herself written to Nunn. “We’re getting tired of being ignored.”
