The Instagram photos show Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his daughter Hope on a sunny autumn Sunday after they finished a 10-mile race during the Twin Cities Marathon weekend.
The father-daughter duo trotted over cracked asphalt in Minneapolis-St. Paul on Oct. 5, race bibs pasted at his stomach and her right thigh.
Their photo finish was punctuated with wide smiles. It was a happier ending to that run than nearly a year ago when then-Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Walz lost to now-President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Since the election, Hope Walz has gained half a million TikTok followers posting from her home in Bozeman, Montana. She courts Gen Z women – many of whom sat out the 2024 election in unusually high margins – with her takes on pop culture and politics.
Hope Walz sits on her couch while holding her phone in Bozeman, Mont. on Sept. 9, 2025. Walz, the daughter of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has emerged as a young communicator for the Democrats after the party’s losses in 2024.
Trump’s electoral victory was due, in part, to wooing young men to polling places. Democrats have been strategizing since about how to win over the constituency.
While it is still unclear if her online followers will translate to Democratic voters, Walz is connecting with her core audience, women under the age of 35. She’s trying to offer a humanizing place to talk politics with her social media presence – an alternative as Americans split on major issues and lawmakers struggle to lower the temperature.
The 2024 election “turned out the way it turned out and there’s no going back at this point, you know? So all we can do is move forward in my eyes,” Walz tells USA TODAY, invoking the “we’re not going back” slogan of the Harris campaign.
Tim Walz’s sidekick builds her brand
Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz embraces his daughter, Hope Walz, after his acceptance speech during the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 21, 2024 in Chicago, Ill.
During her childhood in Mankato, Minnesota, population roughly 45,000, Walz often served as a sidekick to her dad for six campaigns as the long-obscure Midwestern congressman defended his rural swing seat in the U.S. House. When her dad became governor, she co-starred in a public service announcement about distracted driving and video spots at The Minnesota State Fair.
Last summer, she catapulted to national prominence when Gov. Walz used a unique biography – a married ex-football coach and active deer hunter who served in the U.S. military – to pitch himself to voters after being selected as Harris’ running mate.
Walz drew a surge of media attention and prompted popular X posts on the campaign trail for cutting a rootsy profile like her father.
She was seen sporting camo hats, the Harris campaign’s answer to red MAGA caps. She wore a “Brat” lime green nail color to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, inspired by pop star Charli XCX’s Grammy Award-winning breakout album.
She wasn’t making headlines by hawking Democratic policy proposals. Rather, alongside younger brother Gus, Walz went viral after photobombing her dad’s DNC interview on MSNBC using bunny ears.
Then, Harris and her dad lost.
From left, Hope Walz, Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz, Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Second gentleman Doug Emhoff react after Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris conceded the election in a speech at Howard University on Nov. 6, 2024 in Washington, DC.
After the election, Walz moved back into the Bozeman apartment she shares with two roommates. “They’re wonderful,” Walz tells USA TODAY. “Sharing a bathroom is not wonderful.”
Walz hasn’t completely checked out from politics. If Democrats are going to win in 2026 or even 2028, she believes the party’s messengers need to be more relatable to everyday people. The party’s favorability hit record lows in two separate polls in March.
“There’s more to all of us, and we don’t do a good job at showing that, and so I’m going to show it in my own way,” Walz says.
A tattooed hiker with TikTok fame
Online, Walz appears to be accomplishing her goal, garnering nearly 650,000 fans on social media platforms in under a year. Her interests are eclectic. Walz has opined about reality shows like the buzzy Salt Lake City edition of “The Real Housewives” and pop superstar Taylor Swift. She talks about her tattoos and life with her boyfriend.
Walz has also found time to slam Fox News, calling the network “boring” and telling them to kiss her behind. In one TikTok video, she blamed the ongoing federal government shutdown on Trump and “every single Republican” in Congress. She encouraged her followers to get their vaccines, seemingly in response to U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s wide-reaching skepticism.
Courtney Juelich – a social sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout – believes that Walz’s Midwestern “girl next door” personality is the “new ‘can they eat a pork chop?’ and ‘can you have a beer with them kind of test?'” Political observers have long hypothesized that the candidate who seems most like a friend is the one that voters will ultimately choose on Election Day.
“Something that I think people, influencers like Hope and Hope herself, have maybe unintentionally done is be like, ‘I’m not like these air quotes ‘angry feminists,’ or whatever that boogeyman is, right?'” Juelich says, referring to longtime stereotypes. “I have reasonable ideas. I can talk without being irate.”
Hope Walz records a video in Bozeman, Mont. on Sept. 9, 2025.
Wellness creator Kate Glavan also says Walz’s popularity stems from relatability.
“A lot of the reason her and her family resonate is because they are normal people. They speak in a very understandable way,” Glavan told USA TODAY.
The Minnesota native, who boasts 150,000 TikTok followers, added that “oftentimes on the left, people are using theory and academic language, and you’re losing people from that.”
The apple may not fall far from the tree. On the 2024 campaign trail, Gov. Walz caught national attention by using the word “weird” to describe opponents Trump and Vance. Gov. Walz’s folksy, everyman image has extended to his daughter.
“I do think people maybe gravitated towards me because they could see themselves,” Walz says of her audience.
“To some degree, I care deeply about issues and I’m very outspoken about them but I’m also just a normal 24-year-old,” Walz added. “I go to work, I go hiking on the weekend.”
Hope Walz poses in Bozeman, Mont. on Sept. 9, 2025.
Hope Walz works as social worker at homeless shelter. Can she influence voters too?
Like most twenty-somethings adjusting to post-grad life, Walz – who works part-time at a ski resort throughout Montana winters and year-round at a homeless shelter – considers rising costs.
Also like her dad, she’s down to earth about spending. The governor disclosed last year that he had no significant investments, bonds, stock holdings, real estate or a current residence outside of the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion.
Affordability was a central concern for voters in the 2024 presidential contest and remains relevant in the run up to the 2026 midterms, especially among younger voters.
“I think young people felt, or still feel, hopeless in some degree or to some degree, and they’re like, ‘It doesn’t really matter. Like, it’s bad anyways, who cares who wins? I’m already struggling, I can’t find a job in this job market,'” Walz says.
But can talking about the cost of living mobilize young people? The left hasn’t yet matched the reach of conservative influencers who seized on social issues last year, such as Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
And although plenty of left-leaning stars endorsed Harris and hit the campaign trail to support her White House bid, it didn’t make a difference for the Democratic ticket. Less than 25% of Americans in a recent Associated Press poll said they approve when celebrities speak up about political issues.
Walz, though, pointed to the rise of some left-leaning thinkers over the past year like Hasan Piker, a popular commentator who streams on gaming platform Twitch.
“Hopefully we’re getting there to get our message out to people,” Walz says. “I think we kind of let the right dominate a little bit and then they create the narrative.”
Hope Walz’s future: Where will she go?
The sun sparkled over a Minneapolis bridge and street corners in St. Paul on the Sunday that the Walz father-daughter duo did the 10-mile run during the Twin Cities Marathon. Walz raised about $3,000 for the nonprofit Girls on the Run, a group she participated in as a child.
She posted the photos with her dad to Instagram. That day was a bright spot for the pair after a year with both personal peaks and potholes.
Hope Walz poses in Bozeman, Mont. on Sept. 9, 2025.
First, the loss. Then, on a Saturday night in June, Walz family friends State Sen. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were shot and killed by a man pretending to be a police officer. And a shooter opened fire at a Minneapolis church two months later in a tree-lined neighborhood at August back-to-school Mass, killing two children and injuring 18 others.
Now Gov. Walz is gearing up for another race, announcing his intention to seek reelection for a third term Sept. 16. Walz is thinking about her future, too. “I’m trying to figure out how I feel, where I want to fit,” she says.
She might stay in Montana or move to Arizona to help a candidate running for office in 2026. And no matter what road she decides to run down next year, Walz won’t be looking – or going – back to 2024.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tim Walz’s daughter Hope Walz is a social media star
