Casey Harper (Center Square)
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris Reported to have been selected He nominated Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as his vice presidential candidate. Both candidates have been criticized for their handling of police issues.
Harris was immediately criticized after video emerged of her praising the “defund the police” movement after she took the lead in a bid to replace President Joe Biden.
In the video, Harris talks about redirecting police funding to social services following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police and the ensuing riots that have left small businesses and police stations burned down.
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But Walz was governor of Minnesota when the city burned and was filled with rioters after Floyd’s death. As the city burned, Walz was slow to activate the National Guard, even after Minneapolis officials asked him to do so.
The Minnesota Senate’s Joint Committee on Transportation, Judiciary and Public Safety released a report in October 2020 detailing what went wrong in Minneapolis, including Walz’s role.
that much report Waltz said he downplayed the riots, was slow to respond and blamed local law enforcement and officials.
“Governor Walz had the ability and the duty to use force and law enforcement to stop the criminal violence, but he failed to do so,” the report said. “Because Gov. Walz was engaged in a philosophical debate about whether force should be used to stop the violence, he was unwilling to take the steps necessary to immediately stop the riot.”
These riots and Floyd’s death sparked a wave of looting and rioting in cities across the country.
“Governor Walz and Kamala Harris are like two peas in a pod of leftist ideology,” Mark Ehlinger, president of the Republican National Bar Association, told Center Square. “Vice President Harris urged Democrats to bail out Walz’s violent mob in Minneapolis in 2020, so it’s only natural that they’re teaming up again to continue the same radical, soft-on-crime agenda that has unleashed a wave of crime across the country.”
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He added, “The American people do not want what Tim Walz allowed to happen in Minneapolis to happen again in their communities.”
Harris is nearly tied in the polls with her opponent, former President Donald Trump, who has also criticized the Democratic response to the BLM riots and is likely to join the Republican Party.
Walz has been criticized for Minnesota’s role as a sanctuary state amid the illegal immigration crisis and for his stance on transgender surgery for youth, which puts him further to the left than much of the country.
“In 2021, Minnesotans were nearly 5 times more likely to move to Florida than vice versa,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They are fleeing a state where Gov. Tim Walz has neglected law and order, raised taxes, and imposed unscientific COVID restrictions that have harmed children and destroyed businesses. Walz is an unbridled leftist, an Ilhan Omar-style Democrat who puts ideology above all else.”
Co-published with permission from Center Square.
