Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s story about why he first decided to get involved in political campaigns contradicts public records and statements reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Walz, who previously had a career as a social studies teacher, has long repeated a story about how he and two of his students were refused entry to a reelection rally for former President George W. Bush in 2004, saying that the incident was ultimately what inspired him to get involved in politics, according to the Examiner. However, Walz himself was not refused entry, according to a source who spoke anonymously with the Examiner, and the two “students” Walz brought to the event were actually teenagers who went to different high schools than the one he taught at and who had a public altercation with Bush staffers days prior to the event, public records show.
Walz himself has offered contradictory accounts of this purported origin story.
In some versions of the tale, Walz says he was allowed to enter the event after pointing out his service in the National Guard, while in others, he claims that campaign staffers barred him from entry alongside the students. The Minnesota governor referred to the students as “fellow teachers’ children” in a 2020 social media post, however, in a 2022 interview with Minnesota Public Radio, he said he was “their teacher.”
“It was at this moment that I decided to run for office,” Walz said in 2020 after one of his recollections of the story. “While I had a passion for politics, I had never been overly involved in political campaigns, and many people thought that a high school teacher and football coach didn’t stand a chance.”
One of the minors who accompanied Walz to the rally was turned away by staffers because he had a John Kerry sticker on his wallet, according to a 2024 recounting of Walz’s story in MinnPost.
Matt Klaber and Nick Burkhart, the two teenage boys who accompanied Walz to the rally, were heard making “unfavorable comments” about Bush while waiting to purchase tickets and were confronted by staffers, initially being denied tickets, according to a 2004 blog post written by Steve Benen, a left-of-center commentator who would later become a producer for Rachel Maddow. The duo were eventually given their tickets, however, Bush campaign staffers later told them that the Secret Service had determined that they were a threat to the president and that they couldn’t attend the rally for that reason, according to the Examiner.
Journalists and conservative commentators have scrutinized Walz for making false statements before, with the Harris campaign even altering his biography on its website to remove references to him as a “retired command sergeant major” after the Minnesota National Guard confirmed that he did not retire at that rank and that he had been demoted prior to leaving the guard. The campaign also denied that Walz had any personal relationship with an Islamic cleric who promoted pro-Hitler and pro-Hamas media, only for footage to later surface of the Minnesota governor calling him a “master teacher,” the Examiner reported.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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