CHICAGO — The Minnesota delegation had several false starts Wednesday night.
Some shouted Tim Walz’s name after musician John Legend performed at the Democratic National Convention, hoping their governor would be next on stage. Some stood up when Maryland Gov. Wes Moore mentioned Walz’s time in the national guard, thinking perhaps that was his moment. And some could be heard asking “who’s that?” when a former student of Walz’s appeared late Wednesday night to introduce some of the vice presidential candidate’s past football players.
But by the time Walz actually took the stage, much of the Minnesota delegation seemed prepared to run through a brick wall for him. And that was before he even started speaking.
Walz’s speech married many of the aspirational themes Kamala Harris is running on with many of the attacks he and his running mate are leveling against Donald Trump and JD Vance. And he did it with the flourish of a football coach.
“I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks,” he told the crowd. “So let me finish with this, team. It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense, and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy, do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough.”
Walz’s speech seemed written as if the presidential race ran through his hometown. He leaned into his high school football coaching days, hoping that the Midwest-nice vibes he adds to the ticket can boost Democratic chances in November as much as his political résumé.
He managed to draw key contrasts between the two parties and the respective tickets’ records. Specifically, he called out how Republicans were trying to ban certain books in Minnesota while he was trying to “banish hunger.” (Walz signed a law as governor providing free breakfast and lunch to all schoolchildren in the state.)
But time and again, Walz returned to his football roots.
“We’ve got 76 days,” Walz said. “That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field.”
Attendees cheered and shook “Coach Walz” signs as he made his comments — and in interviews afterward, they said they were impressed with his messaging skills.
“He’s so real, so authentic,” said Scott Graham, a delegate from Minnesota. Graham’s favorite Walz line came in a section of the speech about reproductive policy: “We’ve got a golden rule,” Walz said. “Mind your own damn business!”
Karen Kenyatta Russell — a lawyer who, as the daughter of basketball star Bill Russell, has her own experience with sports — also said she appreciated that line. “The pro-choice world has been looking for a tagline for 20 years,” she told NOTUS.
Walz’s speech often touched on the personal, such as when it described the infertility issues he and his wife struggled with when they were trying to have kids. He put their use of fertility treatments in the context of the election, arguing that those services may be in danger and claiming that Trump would try to ban abortion nationwide if he wins the White House. (Trump has said he’s not interested in a federal abortion ban, though Democrats have made a habit of pointing out that it was his appointments to the Supreme Court that made overturning the federal right to abortion possible.)
While Walz certainly made it a point to draw contrasts with Trump and Republicans, the Minnesota governor’s speech will almost certainly be remembered for the emotional response it elicited from the crowd.
In the audience, his wife, his daughter and his son were all visibly moved as Walz addressed the United Center — as was much of the crowd.
Democrats are hoping Walz can help appeal to voters in Midwestern states, and he sought to bring rural charm to the stage.
“Growing up in a small town like that, you learn how to take care of each other,” Walz said of the Nebraska town he grew up in. “That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do. But they’re your neighbors, and you look out for them, and they look out for you.”
Walz made sports metaphors throughout his speech, while painting Trump and his allies as “weird,” “wrong” and “dangerous.” Describing The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a policy blueprint for a second Trump administration, Walz said he’d learned enough from coaching to know that “when somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it.”
Walz also demonstrated his understanding of the social media and online messaging landscape, instructing viewers to clip a section of the speech where he pledged tax cuts for the middle class and telling them to send it to their undecided friends and family members.
For Democrats, who have been thrilled with Harris’s running-mate pick, Walz delivered.
“He is just such a folksy, friendly, fearless fighter for the American people,” Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio said in an interview with NOTUS. “He just communicates in such a direct way.”
The Minnesota delegation was so moved by Walz’s speech that they stayed long after the address, after the vast majority of the crowd had left, chanting Walz’s name and generally expressing their excitement.
As one of their seemingly homemade T-shirts trumpeted: “He’s one of us.”
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.