Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has a rather tense relationship with the truth when it comes to his own background, the latest being the story that as a high school teacher he and two of his students were denied entry to a rally for then-President George W. Bush in 2004, an incident that reportedly led him to enter politics.
But according to the Washington Examiner, Waltz's political origin story “contains significant inaccuracies.”
First, Waltz was allowed to attend Bush's rally, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the August 2004 rally, and the Washington Examiner confirmed that two teenagers who arrived with Waltz, Matt Craver and Nick Burkhart, were not his students.
The young people were also barred from the event and initially denied tickets due to a clash that was covered in local news earlier this week.
Waltz characterized the altercation as “the moment I decided to run” because he was “not very politically active,” but there's evidence that he was already politically active at the time. Photos bear that out: Just a few days earlier, Waltz had attended an anti-Bush protest before the 2004 Bush rally in Mankota, Minnesota, on August 4.
“He was looking for an origin story,” Chris Faulkner, a former Bush campaign staffer who worked at the rally, told the Examiner, “and he invented one.”
Students aiming for a democratic society
Did Waltz really claim that Craver and Burkhart were “my students”? On the one hand, he began a 2020 Twitter (now X) thread by writing that he “brought two of my fellow teachers' children to the speech.” On the other hand, later in the thread he wrote, “I wanted to hear from the President in person and my students, regardless of party, deserve to witness this historic moment of a sitting President coming to our city” (emphasis added). Moreover, in a 2022 interview with Minnesota Public Radio, Waltz said he told Bush event staff that he was “their teacher.”
In fact, at the time of the incident, neither young man was a student at Mankato West High School, where Waltz taught. Burkhart never attended the school. Craver, a graduate of the school who, according to the Examiner, “never took one of Waltz's classes during his time there,” was attending Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, at the time.
Walz acknowledged in a Twitter thread that the two students were “former Democratic volunteers” — Claver was a Democrat at his college, and the two later volunteered for Walz's 2006 congressional campaign. (One sympathetic blogger even described them as “former Walz students.”) Clearly, they weren't just students who wanted to hear Bush speak, but were in fact activists for the opposing party, and were key factors in what followed.
Sticker Shock
Waltz said he and the students all had tickets to the event but were denied entry after staff noticed a John Kerry sticker on one of the students' wallet. Kerry, then a Massachusetts congressman and Bush's Democratic rival, was not allowed in.
The judge found that “Waltz's retelling lacks important context.”
That's because Craver and Burkhart had publicly feuded with the Bush campaign in the days leading up to the 2004 rally: They were initially denied entry after allegedly making “adverse comments” about Bush while waiting in line, according to archived news reports.
After the incident was reported in local news, Craver contacted reporters, and the Bush campaign contacted the teenagers and offered them tickets. In the run up to the 2004 election, police were making arrests at campaign events and protests were on the rise. Craver's parents knew Waltz and expected the teenagers might get into trouble, so they asked him to escort them to the event.
They did, and as the three waited in line that day, a Bush campaign staffer told them that the Secret Service considered Claver and Burkhart to be a threat.
In 2006, The Atlantic interviewed Waltz and described what happened next:
“I told them, as a soldier, I have a right to see the commander in chief,” the normally jovial 41-year-old explained recently at a Democratic-Farmer-Labor dinner in the small town of Albert Lea, Minnesota.
His defiance provoked a KGB-style interrogation that became a sad feature of the Bush campaign. Asked, “Do you support the president?” Waltz refused to answer. Asked, “Do you oppose the president?” Waltz replied that that was his problem, nobody else's. (He later learned that his wife had been told the Secret Service might arrest him.) Waltz thought for a moment, then asked Bush's staff if they really wanted to arrest a command sergeant who had just returned from the war on terror.
He seems to be protesting
As is now well known, Waltz was never a master sergeant and never participated in combat in the “War on Terror.”
Did his wife really know he was facing arrest? If so, it might be because just a few days earlier he had been seen outside the ticket center for a Bush rally holding a sign that read “Veterans of Enduring Freedom Supporting Kerry” – although, of course, he had never been to Afghanistan.
Waltz ended up attending the rally, but what he saw as the injustice of the incident is said to have motivated the previously apolitical Minnesota native to run for Congress and eventually become the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
But as his appearance at the protest before the rally shows, that part of his story is just as credible as the rest.
“He was obviously involved in politics prior to[the rally],” Faulkner told the Examiner. “He was protesting in front of the ticket distribution center. This is total bullshit.”
