Fifteen years before he was picked as Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential contest, then-Rep. Tim Walz was a holdout on a sweeping Democratic climate bill.
The now-Minnesota governor, who’s winning accolades from green groups, was the focus of a pressure campaign in 2009 as House leaders and the Obama White House looked to shore up the votes for the climate and energy legislation known as the Waxman-Markey bill.
Walz’s deliberations over the climate bill, which he detailed in news accounts at the time, offer a glimpse into how the farm-state Democrat approached climate policy, his constituents and his party’s leadership on a major vote that proved to be politically perilous for many moderate lawmakers.
Democrats were in a sprint in the summer of 2009 to try to pass a climate bill, a major priority for then-President Barack Obama.
