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In the month since Tim Walz was named as Kamala Harris’s running mate, stories have circulated online that he lied about his military service, his dog and how he seasons his food.
Some of the misinformation is laughably insignificant (it’s not clear many voters truly care what Walz puts on his tacos), but as a tactic to chip away at his credibility it could prove effective in the end. The US electorate has become more polarised on Walz since he joined the Harris campaign, according to Five Thirty Eight, with his overall favourability dropping roughly 5 points.
Studies have shown that even when misinformation is corrected it can linger in voters’ minds and influence their judgements. Walz was a relative unknown when he stepped onto the stage next to Harris a few weeks ago. Filling the vacuum with junk could prove an effective strategy to discredit the Democratic ticket.
The Walz controversies can be split into three groups. The first consists of misrepresentations originating from him. This was the case with his military service: Walz said in 2018 that he “carried a weapon of war in war” but although he did serve in the Minnesota National Guard and was deployed to Italy in a support role during the war in Afghanistan, he didn’t see combat.
The second is misrepresentations by political opponents, including Republicans efforts to make the nickname “Tampon Tim” stick on the basis of a misreported story that as Minnesota’s governor he had “forced schools to stock tampons in boys’ bathrooms”. In reality he signed a state law mandating that menstrual products be available to any student who needed them.
Third are wilder claims that tend to originate from the recesses of the internet but are amplified by political figures. One tweet from an account described as “Minnesota GOP hype man” suggested Walz had been caught in a lie by identifying two different dogs as his. In truth, there were two dogs present in a picture in which he correctly identified one as his.
