Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz drew the ire of Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville after comments he made at a Boston fundraiser Wednesday.
“I feel like one of my roles in this now is to be the anti-Tommy Tuberville, to show that football coaches are not the dumbest people,” Walz was quoted as saying.
Walz previously coached football at Minnesota’s Mankato West High School, which won the state championship in 1999.
Tuberville, of course, was famously coach of Auburn University from 1999 to 2008, along with stops at Ole Miss, Cincinnati and Texas Tech over a 21-year career. His 2004 Auburn team went undefeated and won an SEC championship.
Tuberville replied on X, calling Walz “an embarrassment to the Coaching profession.”
However, Tuberville hurled several accusations at Walz that require context.
The senator claimed Walz “DESERTED his military unit when he found out they were deploying to Iraq. Walz had the Police ABANDON precincts while his cities burned in 2020. And Walz had tampon dispensers installed in BOYS’ bathrooms. He doesn’t need to worry about speaking on behalf of Coaches.”
According to the Associated Press, Walz served a total of 24 years in various units and jobs in the Army National Guard before retiring in 2005.
Preparing for a congressional bid in 2005, Walz’s campaign in March of that year issued a statement saying he still planned to run despite a possible mobilization of Minnesota National Guard soldiers to Iraq. According to the Guard, Walz retired from service in May of that year.
In August 2005, the Department of the Army issued a mobilization order for Walz’s unit. The unit mobilized in October of that year before it deployed to Iraq in March 2006.
Despite his having retired several months before the deployment order was issued, it’s the fact that Walz left the service ahead of his unit’s departure that Republicans have pointed to in attempts to argue that he was aiming to avoid being sent to a combat zone.
Walz was the governor of Minnesota in 2020, during the protests following the death of George Floyd in last May.
An analysis by The New York Times of Walz’s response found that he did not immediately anticipate how widespread and violent the riots would become and did not mobilize the Guard when first asked to do so. He later dispatched state personnel to Minneapolis to restore order.
As governor, Walz also signed a bill mandating free menstrual products in school bathrooms, which costs the state about $2 million.
The law, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, went into effect this year and does not mandate the products in boy’s bathrooms, but gives local districts latitude in where to distribute them.
In the state’s largest school district, for example, they are found in nongendered bathrooms, girls’ bathrooms and are available from health staffers, but not in boys’ bathrooms.
Alabama, incidentally, provides grants for schools to make free menstrual products available.
