What to know about Tim Walz's 1995 drunken driving arrest

MINNEAPOLIS -

Now that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris ' running mate, his drunken driving arrest from 1995 in Nebraska — long before he entered politics — is getting renewed scrutiny.

Walz was a 31-year-old teacher when he was stopped the night of Sept. 23, 1995, near Chadron, Nebraska. He pleaded guilty in March 1996 to a reduced charge of reckless driving.

Here's a look back at what happened, and the aftermath as Walz embarked on a political career a decade later, and last week joined the Democratic presidential ticket:

The case

According to court records, a Nebraska state trooper clocked Walz going 96 mph in a 55-mph zone. The trooper wrote that he detected a strong smell of alcohol on his breath. Walz failed field sobriety and preliminary breath tests.

He was taken to a hospital for a blood test and was booked into the Dawes County Jail. A transcript of his plea hearing on March 13, 1996, quotes the prosecutor as saying his blood test showed an alcohol level of 0.128 per cent, compared with a legal limit of 0.10 per cent. Walz's attorney told the court Walz thought someone was chasing him because the trooper came up fast and didn't turn on his red lights right away.

The defence attorney acknowledged that Walz had been drinking but argued for a fine, saying his blood alcohol level was “relatively low.” He also noted that Walz was a teacher at a local high school and “felt terrible about this, was real disappointed, I guess, in himself.”

He said Walz reported the incident to his principal, resigned from his coaching position and offered to quit his teaching job “because he felt so bad.” He said the principal talked him into staying on as a teacher, and that Walz was now telling students about what happens if one gets caught for drinking and driving. Walz lost his license for 90 days and was fined US$200.

Walz has said he quit drinking alcohol after his arrest. He now prefers Diet Mountain Dew.

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The incident surfaces

A Republican blogger surfaced some court documents in 2006 when Walz made his first run for Congress, in which he ultimately upset incumbent Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht. A few news outlets in the southern Minnesota district did stories, but it didn't become a big issue in that campaign. It went largely forgotten until Walz ran for governor in 2018, when it got a mention in a broader profile by the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. He told the newspaper it was a gut-check moment, and an impetus to change his ways. His wife, Gwen, recalled to the newspaper that she told him: “You have obligations to people. You can’t make dumb choices.”

Distortions

The arrest resurfaced again after Harris picked Walz last week, and Republicans and media outside Minnesota started taking a closer look at his past. The main revelation was that Walz campaign staffers in 2006 gave misleading information to the few news outlets that wrote about it at the time.

His campaign manager told the Post-Bulletin of Rochester that he was not drunk. She said Walz couldn't understand what the trooper was saying to him because he had a hearing loss from his service in an artillery unit in the National Guard, and suggested that he might have had balance issues as a result. She also falsely claimed that the judge who dismissed the drunken driving charge chastised the officer for not realizing that Walz was deaf.

His campaign spokeswoman made similar statements to KEYC-TV and The Journal of New Ulm, saying, "The DUI charge was dropped for a reason: It wasn’t true.” She claimed he failed the field sobriety test because of his deafness, and that the trooper let Walz drive to a police station and leave on his own.

The court records don't mention any ear issues and make clear that the trooper took him to jail. The transcript showing that he acknowledged in court that he was drunk apparently didn't surface until 2022, when the conservative Minnesota site Alpha News reported on it.

The Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why his former campaign staffers provided incorrect information.

Walz did have ear surgery in 2005 to remedy his hearing loss.