The truth behind Tim Walz’s 1995 DUI arrest and how it changed his life

Tim Walz chose to stop drinking alcohol in 1995 after he was arrested for driving under the influence, a story that has resurfaced after Vice President Kamala Harris announced the Minnesota Governor as her running mate.

On September 23, 1995, Walz, a 31-year-old, newlywed, high school teacher and football coach, was pulled over doing 96 miles per hour in a 55mph zone. The officer who stopped Walz smelled a “strong odor of alcoholic beverage”, according to the police report.

After failing a field sobriety test and preliminary breath test, Walz was taken to a local jail in Dawes County, Nebraska.

The incident took place 11 years before Walz first pursued political office as Minnesota’s First Congressional District Representative.

But the DUI has come up time and time again throughout Walz’s political career and his meteoric rise to Harris’s running mate on the 2024 Democratic ticket is no different.

When Walz first ran for Congress in 2006 his opponents brought up the DUI – which, according to a court transcript obtained by Alpha News, was resolved in 1996 when he pled guilty to the state’s reduced charge of reckless driving.

Although he had a blood alcohol concentration of .128 (approximately .028 over the state’s limit at the time), Walz’s lawyer told the judge that Walz was speeding because he believed the police officer was “chasing him” since he did not turn on his flashing lights on immediately.

Walz’s lawyer told the judge that his client “felt terrible” about the incident and was “real disappointed in himself”.

The Minnesota governor ultimately went to the principal of his school, resigned from his extracurricular duties and offered to resign his teaching position, though his boss did not take him up on that.

The plea deal ultimately led Walz to pay a $200 fine, plus court costs – and he received a harsh talking-to from the judge.

But when Walz was faced with allegations of a DUI in 2006, his campaign denied that he was ever drunk and instead claimed it was a misunderstanding between Walz and the state trooper who pulled him over for speeding.

“Walz was hard of hearing, a result of his years as an artillery soldier in the Army National Guard, and had trouble hearing the trooper,” Meredith Salsbery, communications director for the Walz campaign, told the NuJournal at the time.

“He couldn’t understand what the trooper was telling him during the field sobriety test, and the trooper refused to speak up,” the communications director added.

It is unclear why Walz’s campaign team misrepresented the incident at the time.

In the years that followed, Walz publicly admitted to having been arrested. He told The Star Tribune in 2018 that the incident was a “gut-check moment” and he had chosen not to drink alcohol since.

His choice of beverage now is like that of his Republican counterpart, JD Vance: Diet Mountain Dew soda.