In Tim Walz's hometown, spotlight is bittersweet

Andrew Marszal, Agence France-Presse

When Tim Walz locked horns with J.D. Vance in Tuesday's vice presidential debate, he spoke fondly — as he often does — about his small town roots in Butte. "I grew up in small rural Nebraska, a town of 400, a town that you rode your bike with your buddies until the street lights come on," said Walz. "My mom still lives in the house where I was" brought up, added the Democrat. But every time Walz emphasizes his roots in this staunchly Republican town, Beth Lechtenberg, a rancher and mother of three in Butte, laughs.

"The consensus around here is, we don't want him running our country," she said. "His morals and values don't line up with our morals and values here." Surrounded by cornfields, Butte's short main street consists of a post office, a bank, a family-run cafe and a bar. Residents have to travel 10 miles (16 kilometers) for the nearest grocery store.

Next to the community center, where residents will vote in November, a "TRUMP 2024" flag flutters. Across the road, a storage facility is adorned with the slogan "GOD, GUNS AND TRUMP."

Walz and his family may have deep roots here, but attitudes toward the former hometown boy lay bare the nation's stark political divisions. People are unfailingly polite, but far from complimentary when asked about Walz — a regular event because of the steady stream of journalists who have arrived since Kamala Harris chose the Minnesota governor as her running mate in August.

"I'm friends with a lot of his family. And ain't one of them will say anything good about him," said Brad Kallhoff, 58, who owns a transportation business. "They say Tim was a good kid back in the day. But whatever happened to him up in Minnesota?"

Walz was born in West Point, grew up in Valentine, and attended high school in Butte — each Nebraska town smaller than the last. But it is Butte that Walz proudly highlighted at his Democratic convention speech in August, and again at Tuesday's debate.

At the convention, he praised a small town where "that family down the road, they may not think like you do... but they're your neighbours and you look out for them and they look out for you." Walz's politics certainly stand apart from those of a county that voted 87 percent Republican at the last presidential election.

Jean Hanson, a 63-year-old accountant, who attended Walz's high school but left Butte in 1980, said that his rise to prominence had been "very, very hard" for the people who still live in the town to digest. "They want to be proud. They want to. It's the best thing that's happened to Butte in so many decades. And yet they're so torn," she said from her home in Omaha, Nebraska's biggest city.

"I do think he represents Nebraska and the values of Nebraska's small towns well," Hanson added after the debate. Back in Butte, several residents said Walz was a "good man" and expressed pride that he had put their hometown on the map — even if they wished he was representing the other side.

"It gives people hope, because it's like, you can come from a school that is so small and a community that is so small and do anything," said Britanie Brewster, 38, who runs the town's small and eclectic museum.

But "his views are very different from those of people here," she added. Few residents were enthusiastic about watching the debate, which clashed with a girl's school volleyball game, a meeting of the local firefighter volunteers and harvesting season.

Walz's mother, Darlene, said she did not plan to be in town the night of the debate. Neighbours said she had been flown out to support her son. Lechtenberg — who disagrees with Walz on everything from abortion to his handling of the protests sparked by George Floyd's death at police hands in 2020  planned to catch up with highlights later on Fox News. "We know what he stands for, and I don't feel like we're gonna learn anything new," she said.