MINNEAPOLIS— Gov. Tim Walz faced the biggest crisis of his political career when Minnesota’s two largest cities erupted in protests and riots after a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd.
The Black man’s murder in 2020 sparked a nationwide reckoning over racial discrimination and police misconduct. His death, and its complicated aftermath, tested Walz’s leadership at one of the state’s most consequential moments.
What the governor did — or failed to do — during and after the violence in Minneapolis and St. Paul drew sharp criticism from Republicans in Minnesota. Nor did it satisfy some progressives who had urged him to take bolder steps to remake policing in the state. Walz’s defenders say he did an exemplary job under unprecedented circumstances.
Four years later, on the national stage as the Democratic nominee for vice president, Walz is facing similar questions and criticism: Republicans are calling him a left-wing radical who was too slow to act and some progressives are saying he was not radical enough in addressing police abuses.
A review by The Associated Press — based on government documents, consultant reports, news accounts, video and audio recordings, as well as interviews with families, activists, lawyers and public officials — paints a nuanced picture of how Walz handled the challenge. As a relatively new governor, he tried to balance the competing pressures and interests of local and federal officials, including then-President Donald Trump, while navigating the dangers posed by fast-evolving protests and riots taking place amid a deadly global pandemic.
“Sitting on the sidelines and critiquing, that’s not what being governor is. It’s making the hard decisions at the time,” Walz said during a gubernatorial debate in 2022. He defended how local, state and federal authorities worked together, and said it should serve as model for other states. “I’m proud of Minnesota’s response; I’m proud of Minnesota’s first-responders who were out there, from firefighters to police to the National Guard, to citizens that were out there,” he said.
Fateful days in May
Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, Memorial Day. Bystander video of his dying cries of “I can’t breathe” spread quickly, stoking outrage. The protests were mostly peaceful at first, albeit with some vandalism and clashes with police, as leaders struggled to balance the free-speech rights of protesters against the need to protect public safety.
Major looting started on May 27, two nights later. A Target store was plundered. An auto parts store and several other businesses were torched. The police chief asked the mayor to seek help from the National Guard. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey would later say the governor hesitated, an accusation that Walz would deny.
Walz, a 24-year National Guard veteran, approved a limited activation on May 28 to protect firefighters and the State Capitol complex, and declared a peacetime emergency, though he continued to leave most of the response in the hands of local authorities.
The destruction only worsened that night. Protestors took control of the 3rd Precinct station, which soon caught fire and was destroyed. Guard troops did not arrive at the police station until several hours later, in the early hours of May 29.
That day, Walz criticized the “abject failure” of the city’s response. He said the state would take control and he imposed a nighttime curfew.
“I will assume responsibility,” Walz said, adding that he understood criticism that the state had not moved quickly enough. “That is on me,” he said.
After another night of violence between protesters and police, and more arson, the governor ordered a full mobilization of the Guard. He considered a Pentagon offer to send military police but he did not accept it. The next day, May 31, he said Attorney General Keith Ellison, who enjoyed trust within the Black community, would take over prosecution of the officers involved in Floyd’s death.
By the time most of the violence subsided, more than 1,500 businesses and buildings had been damaged, costing an estimated $500 million.
Republicans criticize state and local response
The Republican-controlled Minnesota Senate held a series of hearings on the unrest and the official response that July. The final report in October 2020 blamed a failure of executive leadership at the state and local level and a hesitation by the Democratic governor and city leaders to confront their ideological allies.
“Governor Walz, his administration and Mayor Frey failed to realize the seriousness of the riots and the danger to Minnesotans if rioters were not confronted and stopped,” the Senate GOP report said. “Both Governor Walz and Mayor Frey failed to act in a timely manner to confront rioters with necessary force due to an ill-conceived philosophical belief that such an action would exacerbate the rioting.”
During recent appearances in Minnesota, Trump falsely claimed that he personally was responsible for deploying the National Guard, even though it was actually Walz who gave the mobilization orders.
“Every voter in Minnesota needs to know that when the violent mobs of anarchists and looters and Marxists came to burn down Minneapolis four years ago — remember me? — I couldn’t get your governor to act,” the Republican presidential nominee said in July. “He’s supposed to call in the National Guard or the Army. And he didn’t do it.”
That contrasts sharply with the praise that Trump heaped on Walz as the dust settled on the crisis. Two days after Walz ordered the full National Guard mobilization, the then-president told governors and administration officials on a conference call that Minnesota’s chief executive had been doing a stellar job.
“What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately,” Trump said, according to an audio recording of the call obtained by the AP. The audio shows that the president didn’t criticize the governor at the time. “Tim, you called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast, it was like bowling pins,” Trump said.
Two nonpartisan external reviews, released in March 2022, found shortcoming in both the city’s and the state’s responses.
A report by the nonprofit Wilder Research, commissioned by the Department of Public Safety, cited a lack of clear leadership early on. The report said the state did not set up a multiagency command center until too late, four days after Floyd was killed. It said the center had a “chaotic beginning,” with no clear chain of command, while the city continued to operate its own emergency operations center with competing law enforcement strategies. The report also said the National Guard was mobilized too late.
A separate after-action report commissioned by the city and done by the risk management firm Hillard Heintze said Minneapolis officials who requested assistance from the Guard were unfamiliar with the process, which held up the approval and deployment of troops.
