On August 7, less than twenty-four hours after accepting an offer to become Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz took the stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, alongside the Democratic nominee to thunderous applause. The schoolteacher, football coach, former national guard noncommissioned officer, congressman, and governor of Minnesota brought a new spark of charisma to a Democratic campaign already reenergized after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. Following the announcement, online searches for Walz skyrocketed as Americans outside his native Minnesota sought to learn more about the man taking a giant leap onto the national stage. Until that point, Walz was perhaps best known to the general public for his appearance on MSNBC when he said of Republicans, “These are weird people on the other side.”
Among the troves of information regarding Walz’s lengthy career, one acronym, unfamiliar to many, often appeared beside his name: DFL. For many Americans, this was their introduction to the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) is one of only two state-level parties affiliated nationally with the Democratic Party to use a unique name. The other is the North Dakota Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party. These two parties actually share a common history, and this history explains the reasons for the distinction. Now, decades later, these names are all that remains of that history and of the populist movement that once flourished in the upper Midwest.
A rise in left-wing sentiment in North…
Auteur: Patrick Greeley
