Gwen Walz, Tim Walz's Wife: Coolheaded, Ultracompetent Political Spouse, Pub School Teacher: NYT

'Gwen Walz, the Coolheaded, Ultracompetent Political Spouse,' the New York Times, Aug.14, 2024.' Edit. - Early in her husband’s political career, she stepped in to help. Some wondered: Why isn’t she running? 👥 VIDEO, below.
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Photo: Gwen Walz waves from a stage alongside Tim Walz. Those who have long known Tim and Gwen Walz say that in politics they’re a package deal.
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In 2006, during his first campaign for Congress, Tim Walz was scheduled to speak at a fund-raising dinner in his hometown, Mankato, Minn. He was a political unknown in a tightly contested race against a 6-term incumbent. The dinner was a chance to stump in front of his local district of the Minn. Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and to bolster his campaign coffers. There was only one problem: Mr. Walz had laryngitis. Guests at the event were surprised to see someone else take the stage: Gwen Walz, Mr. Walz’s wife.

She was used to speaking in front of a crowd: Like her husband, Ms. Walz had been a public-school teacher for more than a decade. 📚

Those sitting in the audience were impressed by her confidence and clarity. “There were other candidates who spoke, and she was the most articulate of the bunch,” said John Klaber, a North Mankato resident. “We all looked around and said, ‘Why isn’t she running?’” Most of the American public got its first good look at Gov. Tim Walz last week at a rally in Phila. alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, who had that day announced him as her running mate. At the end of his speech, the nation also got its first glimpse of the woman to whom he has been married for 30 years.

As Ms. Walz enters the national stage, critics on the right are already trying to portray her — as they have with her husband — as a left-wing radical who countenanced the civil unrest in her state after the death George Floyd. But at home in Minn., where she has spent most of her life, friends and political observers describe her as the coolheaded and ultracompetent counterpart to a man known for an intuitive and charismatic political style. “We have always worked as a partnership,” Ms. Walz, 58, told the “What If It Works” podcast last month, later adding, “We are still one another’s closest advisers.”

Ms. Walz regularly advises her husband and has used her platform to advance policy initiatives, most significantly around offering college degree programs to inmates.

Raised in the tiny farming town of Ivanhoe, Minn., Ms. Walz is the daughter of schoolteachers, and the eldest of 4 sisters. Ms. Walz was a caretaker in the family, according to her sister, Heidi Ohlmann. “She’s always looking out for everyone,” Ms. Ohlmann said. Ms. Walz’s mother is still the church organist. Ms. Walz stayed nearby for college: After getting degrees from Gustavus Adolphus College and Minnesota State University, Ms. Walz moved to Alliance, Neb., to teach English. There, she met Mr. Walz, who taught 9th-grade geography at the same school. They married and moved back to Minnesota...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/style/gwen-walz-tim-walz-minnesota.html