It hadn’t quite been a year since George Floyd’s death, and across town, Derek Chauvin was on trial for his murder. I remember feeling stunned that in such an incredibly tense moment in the state, yet another young Black man was dead at the hands of police.
Around that time, it occurred to Tony Webster, a local independent journalist, that Walz was juggling multiple crises. He wanted to know what that situation looked like from the inside. So he submitted a records request for every single email going in or out of Walz’s office from April to mid-June 2021. It was a mammoth data request that state workers only recently fulfilled.
The result: over 81,000 pages of emails, which Tony kindly offered to share. That’s a LOT of reading, but the fact that Walz had just been named as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate made the cache of messages newly relevant. What could we learn about how Walz governed during this chaotic time in Minnesota? Reporters from the Reformer and I dug in.
We found contractor quotes for renovations to the governor’s mansion, reminders to restock Walz’s Diet Mountain Dew supply at the Capitol (cans, not bottles), and newsletters like the Reformer’s.
On a more serious note, the emails make it clear that Walz was struggling daily to push for the police reforms he publicly supported while dealing with a dug-in Republican-controlled Senate, and simultaneously working to maintain credibility with activists while cracking down on protests in Brooklyn Center. We found transcripts of phone calls, text messages, and drafts of proposals and letters, and we synthesized all that into a story we hope provides a glimpse behind the scenes at Walz as a politician and as a person.
