Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, last year’s Democratic nominee for vice president, took another step back onto the national political stage on Friday when he hosted a town hall in front of a friendly audience in Des Moines, the latest in a series of appearances outside his home state.
During roughly an hour on the stage of a high school auditorium, Mr. Walz expressed sadness over Democrats’ struggles with rural and working-class voters, blasted President Trump’s cuts to the federal government and told the crowd that Democrats needed to rethink how they campaigned and governed.
“Millions of people stayed home because they didn’t think there was any difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and myself on the ticket,” Mr. Walz said at the event, which was organized by the Iowa Democratic Party. “We need to acknowledge that. I think one of the reasons is that when Democrats have been in power, we’ve been timid about passing things that make a difference.”
The trip to Iowa was the latest sign that Mr. Walz, who was not widely known outside Minnesota before joining Ms. Harris’s ticket, might be contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028. Mr. Walz spoke last week to a Democratic Party gathering in Montana and was scheduled to hold another town hall in Nebraska, the sorts of appearances that can foster good will among party leaders and help a potential candidate gauge the mood of the electorate. Future trips to Ohio and Wisconsin are in the works.
Mr. Walz also spoke recently at the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals and expressed openness to running for president in an interview with The New Yorker. That posture contrasts with the relatively low profile Mr. Walz kept in the first months after he and Ms. Harris lost every battleground state to Mr. Trump.
Before Mr. Walz makes any decision about 2028, he must likely choose whether to seek a third term as governor of Minnesota next year. The Democratic field in Minnesota has been frozen as would-be candidates wait for Mr. Walz to decide. He has already ruled out running next year for the seat that Senator Tina Smith, a Democrat, will be leaving at the end of her term.
During his visit on Friday to Iowa, a former swing state where Republicans have dominated in the last decade, Mr. Walz talked to voters who told him they worried about cuts to Medicaid and public schools, and that they feared democracy was at risk. When the moderator asked what the audience wanted Democratic leaders to know, several people offered phrases like “fight” or “fight back.”
The high school where Mr. Walz spoke was situated in a heavily Democratic precinct of a closely divided congressional district where Democrats failed last year to unseat Representative Zach Nunn, the Republican incumbent. That district could again help determine control of Congress in the midterm elections.
In interviews and in questions to the governor, several Iowans at Mr. Walz’s event said they were deeply worried about the Trump administration’s actions and in some cases concerned about their own livelihoods. Rachel Falahpour, 43, said she feared cuts to federal grants could harm her work for homelessness programs, and that she wanted elected Democrats to take a bolder stance against Mr. Trump’s actions.
“I wish they were even louder,” she said. “I know there’s some that are just fighting tooth and nail and really calling stuff out — what’s legal, what’s not — but I feel like so much is having to get done in the courts.”
