Minnesota governor Tim Walz has pensions galore from his decades in the public sector. A gig as Kamala Harris’ Vice President could make him richer.
By Kyle Khan-Mullins and Leo Kamin, Forbes Staff
Update (Nov. 4, 2024): The Minnesota governor has embraced reports that he may be the poorest person to ever run for vice president. That’s difficult to say for sure, but the former teacher and football coach is certainly the least wealthy person on either major party ticket this year. Since joining Kamala Harris in her run for the White House in August, Walz has leaned into his humble background and unremarkable finances, proposing that “we all should have a defined benefit pension plan” like him and his wife. Winning higher office will certainly give his bank account a boost, though—the vice president’s $235,000 salary would represent an 84% raise and could help pull his federal pension’s value even higher.
At a raucous Tuesday evening rally in Philadelphia—his first since being picked as Kamala Harris’ running mate—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz walked through his own working-class background, drawing contrasts between himself and former President Trump. “He doesn’t know the first thing about service,” Walz said to applause from the swing-state crowd. “He doesn’t have time for it, because he’s too busy serving himself.”
A former public school teacher and Army National Guardsman who served six terms in Congress and has led Minnesota since 2019, Walz has spent the better part of his life in public service. Such a career helped shape his political views. It also left him the least wealthy politician on a major party ticket this election cycle: Forbes estimates that Walz’s net worth stands at just over $1 million.
Tim Walz’s Net Worth vs. Average American Wealth
That actually puts the 60-year-old candidate closest of all the candidates on the presidential tickets to the median American around his age, who is worth about $540,000, as calculated by Federal Reserve and University of Wisconsin economists in a 2019 study that accounted for pensions and social security benefits as well as other assets.
The Role of Pensions in Tim Walz’s Wealth
It’s the composition of his wealth that is, to borrow one of Walz’s favorite pejoratives for Republicans, weird. Unlike many Americans, neither Walz nor his wife, Gwen—also a longtime public school teacher—appear to own any stock or a single bond, per the last financial disclosure he filed as a member of Congress in 2019. Also unlike most Americans, the Walzes don’t own a home, having sold their five-bedroom Mankato, Minnesota residence soon after he became governor. There are no signs he owns any businesses or pulls in any income besides his roughly $128,000 gubernatorial salary. Instead, nearly all of the Walzes’ wealth stems from government pensions earned through their state, federal and military careers. While around 13% of Americans have a defined benefit pension, the Walzes seem to have at least four, worth around $1 million in total, making up virtually their entire nest egg according to Forbes’ estimates.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s Wealth Disparity
Meanwhile, Walz’s prospective boss, Harris—who also spent much of her career in government service, as a prosecutor, state attorney general and Senator before becoming vice president—is worth a comfortable $8 million, some of it thanks to her husband Doug Emhoff’s lucrative previous career as an entertainment lawyer.
The Republican ticket, in contrast to both Democrats, got rich from the private sector before running for office. Trump, who is worth some $4.8 billion, got his start by inheriting a vast fortune, and these days, more than half his fortune comes from his stake in Truth Social, his Twitter knockoff. JD Vance grew up in poverty but has since amassed around $10 million in wealth thanks to a bestselling book and venture capital investments. Even the most prominent independent in the race, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is rich, worth some $15 million; his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, is the ex-wife of the world’s ninth-richest person, Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
“Donald Trump’s not fighting for you or your family,” Walz said on Tuesday. “He never sat at that kitchen table like the one I grew up at, wondering how we were going to pay the bills.”
Early Life and Education: Tim Walz’s Working-Class Roots
Born in West Point, Nebraska in 1964, Walz is just barely a member of the Baby Boomer generation. He worked on the family farm during the summers; at age 17, his father, a Korean War veteran and school administrator, took him to enlist in the National Guard, beginning more than two decades of mostly reserve military service starting before Walz even graduated high school. His father died of lung cancer two years later, an experience that shaped Walz’s views on healthcare policy. “That last week [of my dad’s life],” he recalled in a 2018 ad, “cost my mom a decade of having to go back to work to pay those bills.”
After several years in the Guard and in other odd jobs, including processing mortgage loans and building grain silos, Walz went to Chadron State College on the G.I. Bill, earning a social sciences degree in 1989. Then he followed his father’s path again and began a career in education. He started in southern China, where he briefly taught English and history. “They gave me more gifts than I could bring home,” Walz told a Nebraska newspaper in 1990. “It was an excellent experience.” After returning stateside, Walz would lead trips to China with American students for years.
Walz and Harris hit the campaign trail in western Wisconsin on Wednesday.
AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
He and Gwen, an English teacher, met soon after—they apparently shared a classroom— and married in 1994. (Reportedly, their wedding date, June 4, was chosen by Walz because it was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, per his wife.) The couple soon moved back to Minnesota, Gwen’s home state, and bought a home near Mankato West High School for $145,000. Walz taught social studies, chaired a gay-straight alliance and led the school’s struggling football team to a state championship in 1999—spawning Harris’ introduction for him on Tuesday as “Coach Walz.”
Tim Walz’s Military Experience and Political Rise
After earning a master’s in teaching in 2001 from Minnesota State, Walz and his National Guard field artillery unit were deployed to Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the global war on terrorism launched after 9/11. He was there for nine months spanning 2003 and 2004.
Shortly after, Walz apparently became interested in running for office, filing with the Federal Election Commission in February 2005 for a congressional race and retiring from the military in May. Though Vance and others have lobbed attacks at him for abandoning his unit, they did not receive an alert order to prepare for deployment to Iraq until July, after his retirement, Minnesota National Guard Army Lt. Col. Ryan Rossman said in a statement Wednesday. Walz’s more than two decades almost certainly earned him a pension that he would have begun receiving when he turned 60 this year. Forbes estimates that income stream to be worth between $200,000 and $350,000.
In 2006, Walz won that seat in Congress, beating a six-term Republican incumbent. “This is four times what I’ve ever made in my life,” Walz reportedly told an aide during an orientation session in which new members were cautioned that many of them would be paid less than their previous jobs. His new salary was $165,200, a figure that would rise to $174,000 by the time he left office. Walz also brought in an extra $2,500 to $5,000 a year from renting a room in his Minnesota house, financial disclosures he filed at the time show. And, in 2019, Gwen reported receiving some money from the law firm Hogan Lovells. A spokesperson for the firm told Forbes that the payments were for appearing at a Pride event it hosted.
While in Congress, Walz cut a moderate, rural figure, earning the endorsement of the pro-gun rights National Rifle Association and high scores from the pro-environment League of Conservation Voters. He left office in 2019 with a pension that, thanks to the ability to double-dip into his active-duty years in the military, Forbes estimates is worth upwards of $475,000.
In 2019, Walz became Minnesota’s governor. The salary reduction to about $128,000 may have stung a bit, but it came with housing in the governor’s mansion in Saint Paul. The Walzes sold their Mankato home for just over $300,000, likely keeping little cash after paying off their mortgage. Gwen also left teaching and took a part-time position in the administration at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, which reportedly paid similarly to her roughly $60,000 salary in Mankato.
Walz delivered his 2021 State of the State address from his old classroom at Mankato West High School.
Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via AP, Pool
Walz won reelection in 2022, bringing with him Democratic majorities in the state legislature that passed progressive priorities like paid family and medical leave, codified abortion rights and free school breakfast and lunch. Additionally, as governor, he has access to a 401(k) style retirement plan; assuming he’s been making his contributions, Forbes estimates that he could have around $100,000 in the account today.
Some parts of the Walzes’ financial picture remain unclear. For example, on Walz’s 2019 congressional disclosure, both Tim and Gwen reported one pension and one “pension plan/annuity” apiece, seemingly related to their time as teachers. But a spokesperson for Education Minnesota, one of the organizations listed as administering the pension on the disclosures, said that the group “does not provide direct financial support to any members, but there are discounts on insurance products our members can access.” Neither Harris’ office nor Walz’s governor’s office replied to a request for comment, so for the purposes of this valuation, Forbes estimated the present value of one teaching pension for each of them and treated the other line item as cash.
Walz also reported mutual funds in a small college savings account and life insurance policies in 2019, neither of which show up on his more recent Minnesota disclosures. His daughter graduated from Montana State University last year, so it’s possible the college savings account is depleted, but we don’t know for sure. Walz’s required filings as a vice presidential candidate could provide more detail on how his assets have changed since 2019—but with less than 90 days before the election, he could potentially get extensions past November 5, leaving voters in the dark.
Projected Financial Gains from the Vice Presidency
One thing is certain: If the Harris-Walz ticket wins the White House, Walz’s financial picture will likely improve. The vice president’s $235,000 salary would be an 84% raise and would boost Walz’s federal pension’s value even higher. He reportedly told Harris he has no presidential ambitions for when her time in office is up. That may actually be a financial boon for him: Former vice presidents have plenty of ways to quickly make money once they’re out of office, from hitting the speaking circuit to writing memoirs.
In fact, in financial—if not political—terms, Walz looks remarkably similar to Mike Pence in 2016: another midwestern governor, picked for VP by a much wealthier presidential candidate from a coastal state, whose pensions represented essentially all of a net worth of about $1 million. After leaving office, Pence quadrupled his net worth in just three years.
With additional reporting by Janet Novack.