ST. PAUL, Minn. — No one would accuse Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota of being flashy. He taught social studies for 20 years before trying politics. During six terms in Congress, he was regarded more as a workhorse than a showboat.

Neither has Walz really been a household name outside of Minnesota — at least, not until last week, when he made a flurry of cable news appearances pointedly pressing Kamala Harris’ case and dismissing Donald Trump’s agenda as divisive and extreme. And weird.

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“These guys are just weird,” Walz said Saturday of the Republican ticket. He was talking to a crowd of canvassers for the Harris campaign in St. Paul, but the “weird” line of attack, which he has been using for months, went viral. ( Harris used the words “just plain weird” over the weekend to describe the ways in which Republicans have chosen to criticize her.)

Weird is not a word most people would use to describe Walz, and that may well be one reason he is among a handful of Democrats under consideration as Harris’ potential running mate. Walz is seen as offering a steady, down-to-earth, everyman persona. His supporters say he also would bring a record of winning over moderate voters and deep roots in the rural Midwest that might serve as a counterpoint to Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate.

Walz, 60, was raised in a small town in Nebraska. He attended public schools and graduated from Chadron State College in Nebraska. He taught at a public school in Mankato, Minnesota, a small city south of Minneapolis where Walz and his wife, a fellow teacher, raised two children. Outside the classroom, he coached high school football and served in the Army National Guard for 24 years, ascending to the rank of command sergeant major.

In 2006, Walz got his start in politics by defeating a longtime Republican member of Congress in a largely rural district, a feat that has become increasingly rare in recent years.

“Here’s a guy who actually knows how to fish, this is a guy who actually knows how to hunt, this is a guy who served our country in the National Guard,” said Heidi Heitkamp, a former senator and fellow Democrat who lost her post representing nearby North Dakota, a rural and conservative state, in 2018.

As a running mate to Harris, Walz could help Democrats shore up support in battleground states by appealing to the working-class, white, rural voters who have drifted away from the party, Heitkamp said. “When you look at Tim Walz, what you have is someone with a lived experience that is so comparable to so many of the people in rural America who are willing to maybe reconsider just blindly voting for the Republican Party candidate,” she said.

As governor of Minnesota, though, Walz’s policy moves have sharply steered the state to the left.

Walz won a second term in 2022 as Democrats flipped the state Senate. That sealed a trifecta that gave Democrats control of the state Capitol, and Walz presided over the state’s most productive legislative session in decades.

Democrats enshrined a right to abortion under state law, legalized recreational marijuana, funded free meals at schools across the state, required employers to offer paid medical and family leave, expanded background checks for gun purchases and established a goal to transition to a carbon-free electricity grid by 2040.

Walz, who is chair of the Democratic Governors Association, was unapologetic about all the change. “Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital,” he wrote as the 2023 legislative session ended. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”

Choosing Walz for the national ticket would not directly answer the most pressing geographic concerns in this election. While presidential elections have sometimes been close in Minnesota, voters there have not selected a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972. Still, the Trump campaign has made it clear that it hopes to be competitive in Minnesota, and Trump and Vance held a rally in St. Cloud over the weekend.

Even if Minnesota is not a political battleground, some supporters say that having Walz on the ticket could resonate with other upper Midwestern voters, including those in the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan.

But David Hann, chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, said Walz’s inclusion on Harris’ list of running mates showed that Democrats were struggling, even in traditionally blue states like Minnesota. Polls conducted before President Joe Biden gave up his reelection bid have given Republicans hope that Minnesota could flip to their party in November. But a Fox News poll conducted last week showed Minnesotans supporting Harris over Trump by 6 percentage points.

Hann said that if Walz were to be selected as the vice presidential pick, he would prove to be a liability. Hann said Walz was responsible for failing to prevent the chaos and damage that followed the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020. In riots after the killing, a 5-mile stretch of the city sustained extraordinary damage, including a police precinct that was set on fire.

Walz deployed hundreds of National Guard troops three days after Floyd’s murder as looting, arsons and demonstrations spread through Minneapolis. Critics said the governor should have acted sooner to quell mounting unrest. The Walz administration has said that the city of Minneapolis failed to provide detailed information needed to deploy the Guard earlier.

Hann and other critics said that as governor, Walz led the “most partisan administration” in recent memory, passing a trove of liberal legislation that Republicans called extreme and fiscally irresponsible. “There’s such great dissatisfaction with Democrats at the national level and certainly in the state, where in the last two years they’ve run everything,” Hann said.

But Walz’s supporters say his approach is anything but divisive. Rep. Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat in a competitive district, called Walz “an antidote to this divide we see in our nation today.” He is the rare politician, she said, who is as comfortable attending an agribusiness festival as a gala for a gay-rights group.

Across the state, Walz’s approval ratings fell after the turbulent era that followed Floyd’s killing. But he easily won reelection in 2022, and recent polls show that a majority of Minnesotans approve of his performance.

As a member of Congress from 2007 to 2019, Walz had a reputation as a hard worker who found common ground with Republicans, particularly on initiatives to help veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat who is the longest-serving Minnesotan currently in Congress, said Walz’s negotiation style and experience on Capitol Hill would help a Harris administration pass difficult legislation.

“He will not twist an arm,” she said. “He will ask somebody what they need, what they’re missing or what the legislation is missing, and whether there is some way to get to yes.”

Walz, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said he spoke to Harris the day Biden announced he was quitting the race. Like other potential running mates, Walz has demurred publicly about his interest in joining the ticket. Close friends have privately described him as eager to be picked and hit the campaign trail.

During the event for canvassers in St. Paul on Saturday, Walz once again steered away from questions about being among the top finalists for running mate. He told reporters that he was “honored to be in this conversation.”

“I love them all,” Walz, who wore a “Minnesota Grown” T-shirt and a baseball cap, said of the other Democrats who are said to be under consideration. “I tell you what, I trust her judgment.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.