Minnesota media CYA: rewriting the Walz history
It’s been gratifying watching the national media hold Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accountable for his actions and polices. I say that as a former political operative who spent years trying and failing to convince the Minnesota press to share the Walz record with their viewers and readers.
The best example is the stolen valor issue, where Walz retired from the National Guard right before his unit was called to Iraq. As the Communications Director for the Johnson for Governor campaign in 2018, I raised this issue with the Minnesota press and was told it was “old news” because the Mankato Free Press wrote about it ten years earlier and Walz won his election that year, proving voters didn’t care. (That would make an interesting standard for covering issues if it was applied equally to both sides)
Now that the national press is revisiting the story, the Minnesota press is scrambling to cover their asses and explain why many Minnesotans are hearing about it for the first time. FOX 9 ran a fact check on the piece this week writing, “Minnesotans have heard most of these attacks before.” But have they? Did FOX 9 run a story about Walz’s military record in 2018 or 2022 when Republicans raised the issue? I couldn’t find one.
FOX 9’s fact check piece on the timeline of Walz’s abrupt retirement from the guard actually includes the fact that his unit was warned about a possible deployment to Iraq months before he quit. But they only talked to sympathetic colleagues, dismissing the criticism from others who have made themselves available for interviews.
Period Products in Boys’ Bathrooms
The Star Tribune editorial page also joined the effort to re-write Walz’s record on the topic of menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms down to the 4th grade. When the 2023 legislature passed this bill and Walz signed it, there was no confusion about the fact that menstrual products would be made available to both boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. We featured this fact in our 2023 Off the Cliff presentation all over the state. No one raised a question.
But after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis coined the nickname “Tampon Tim,” Star Tribune opinion writer Jill Burcum reacted on X saying, “Turns out MN’s new law does NOT mandate menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms.”
That was the first time I’ve seen anyone question this. As my colleague Catrin Wigfall wrote last December before the law went into effect:
During a House Education Policy Committee on the bill this past January, an amendment to add the word “female” before the student reference was rejected (“…in restrooms regularly used by female students in grades 4 to 12…”). “Not all students who menstruate are female,” bill author Rep. Sandra Feist stated. “This [the amendment] is just another way to divide people in our schools,” added Thomas Stinson, a licensed school nurse at Harding High School.
It was clearly the intent of the DFL legislature to include boys’ bathrooms in this bill. Everyone understood that and nobody, include Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Walz, were embarrassed about it. Now that Walz is being promoted to a wider audience, the Star Tribune and others are trying to rewrite history.
Fake News
These are classic examples of fake news. The letter of the law does not say “boys’ bathrooms,” so they are technically correct. Walz retired from the guard before the official notice arrived sending him to Iraq, so they are technically correct. But context matters. Everyone understood that period products would be placed in all bathrooms. And everyone in Walz’s unit understood they were being called up to Iraq, and you just don’t bail when that happens.
You can’t rewrite history, and you can’t have it both ways.