The Walz record: Abortion rights, free lunches for schoolkids, and disputes over a riot response

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Gov. Tim Walz and his fellow Democrats have enacted big changes in the two years that they’ve had full control of the Minnesota Legislature, from expansions of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights to tax credits and other initiatives aimed at making life easier for families.

His record has delighted liberals and progressives and is a major reason why Vice President Kamala Harris chose him to be her running mate. He doesn’t try to claim all the credit — strong Democratic legislative leaders also played major roles. But his record continues to draw condemnation from Republicans, who say he squandered a huge budget surplus that should have been used for tax cuts, failed to prevent hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, and acted too slowly to quell the violence that followed the murder of George Floyd.

Here’s some of what Walz has done as governor and how it might connect to the campaign now that he’s on the Democratic Party ticket:

REMOVING ABORTION RESTRICTIONS

Walz signed legislation codifying abortion rights, repealing essentially all the state’s restrictions and adding protections for patients who travel from states where abortion is restricted. The governor joined Harris during her visit in March to a St. Paul Planned Parenthood clinic, where she paid tribute to Minnesota’s leadership in what her office said was the first time a president or vice president had toured a facility that performs abortions. Among the restrictions eliminated were a 24-hour waiting period and parental consent requirements.

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LGBTQ RIGHTS

Walz and his fellow Democrats also enacted new protections for the rights of LGBTQ+ people from Minnesota and other states to receive gender-affirming health care, specifically including families coming from elsewhere for treatment for trans children. The state also banned so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children and vulnerable adults.

GEORGE FLOYD

Walz is under renewed fire for his response to the sometimes violent unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, which included the burning of a police station and numerous businesses. Former President Donald Trump has been repeating his false claim that he was responsible for deploying the National Guard to quell the violence. It was Walz who gave the order in response to requests from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, not Trump. But within Minnesota, GOP legislators said both Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey were too slow to act. And there was finger-pointing between Frey and Walz over who was responsible for not activating the Guard faster. But the ensuing national reckoning on racial injustice also spurred the passage of police accountability measures in Minnesota.

FISCAL OVERSIGHT

Republicans say lax oversight by the Walz administration over pandemic programs cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. That includes one of the country’s largest pandemic aid fraud cases, known as the Feeding Our Future scandal. Federal prosecutors charged 70 people with defrauding programs that funded meals for kids during the pandemic out of $250 million on Walz’s watch. The Office of the Legislative Auditor, a nonpartisan watchdog, delivered a scathing report in June that said the state Department of Education “failed to act on warning signs” and was “ill-prepared to respond.” Legislative Auditor Judy Randall told lawmakers that state agencies “don’t necessarily approach their work with an oversight and a regulatory mindset.” More recently, the administration has been criticized for payments to ineligible people for a bonus program for frontline workers, and overpayments of unemployment insurance.

BUDGET SURPLUSES

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Walz has benefited from Minnesota’s relatively strong economy, which generated enough tax revenues to provide decent surpluses at the start of the 2019 and 2021 budget cycles and an enormous $17.6 billion budget surplus for 2023 that gave Democrats plenty to spend on their priorities. Those had been building up for years and included big increases for K-12 and post-secondary education. Two of his proudest accomplishments are tax credits for families with children that were aimed at slashing childhood poverty and free school meals for all kids regardless of family income. Democrats also enacted a paid family and medical leave program that has been held up as a potential model for federal legislation. Republican lawmakers say most of that surplus should have been returned to taxpayers via permanent tax cuts.

BIPARTISANSHIP

During his first term, Walz found ways to work with a Legislature that was split between a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-led Senate. The arrangement was productive in his first year, but bipartisan cooperation frayed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, he relied on emergency powers to lead the state’s response, which included lockdowns, closing schools and churches, and shuttering businesses. Once Democrats took full control of the Legislature in 2023, they didn’t need Republican votes for much except for a $2.6 billion public infrastructure package in 2023 that required supermajorities in each chamber.

LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

Under Walz’s watch, Minnesota became the 23rd state to legalize recreational marijuana for adults. But Minnesota still doesn’t have a functioning legal marketplace. Developing the program has gone slowly, so the only places now selling non-medical marijuana legally are dispensaries on Native American reservations that aren’t subject to state law. Walz’s first choice to head the state’s Office of Cannabis Management stepped aside just one day after her appointment last September after it was revealed that the administration’s vetting process failed to discover that her business sold products exceeding state limits on THC potency, owed money to former associates and accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in tax liens. The office is still without a permanent leader.

VOTING

Walz signed legislation to make it easier to vote in Minnesota, where it was already pretty simple, and shoring up state-level protections for voting rights that federal courts had eroded. One major change was restoring the rights of convicted felons to vote as soon as they get out of prison, instead of having to wait until their supervised release ends. It was framed as an issue of racial equity. After Walz became Harris’ running mate, conservatives cited it as evidence that he’s soft on crime. But the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the law against a challenge by conservatives who said it was unconstitutional. The law extended voting rights to at least 55,000 people who had been ineligible.

GUN SAFETY

Minnesota’s first lady, Gwen Walz, used her position to back up his advocacy of gun safety measures, including legislation her husband signed in 2023 to require universal background checks for gun transfers and a “red flag” law to let authorities temporarily take guns from people ruled a risk to themselves or others.