Tim Walz faces another charge of misrepresentation in uncovered letter

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faces another accusation of misrepresenting his record after a 2006 Nebraska Chamber of Commerce letter resurfaced amid Walz’s vice presidential campaign.

When Walz first ran for Congress in Minnesota, he touted on his campaign website that he had received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce in 1993 for his work with the business community, according to a 2006 Post Bulletin article.

However, he never received such an award, which was announced to him in a harsh letter from then-President of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, Barry L. Kennedy.

“We have investigated this matter and can confirm that you have not received any awards from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce,” reads the letter to Walz dated Nov. 1, 2006.

“I am not going to draw any conclusions about your intentions by including this line in your bio. However, we respectfully request that you remove any reference to our organization as it could be seen as an endorsement of your candidacy. However, it should be noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed your opponent, Congressman Gil Gutknecht, for his support of small business issues,” Kennedy continued.

The letter was discovered by Minnesota outlet Alpha News last week, after the controversy gained traction locally in 2006.

The Post Bulletin, a Minnesota newspaper based in Rochester, reported in 2006 that Walz’s campaign for Congress updated its website to reflect that Walz did not win an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, but instead had won an award from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce, known as the Jaycees.

The then-campaign manager called the matter a “typo,” the outlet reported at the time.

When contacted by Fox Digital about the 2006 controversy, the Harris-Walz campaign said Walz frequently speaks “outspokenly and without a second thought.”

“Governor Walz speaks the way real people speak: openly and without thought. The American people appreciate that Governor Walz tells it like it is and doesn’t talk like a politician, and they appreciate the difference between someone who occasionally misspoke and a pathological liar like Donald Trump,” the campaign said.

The lawsuit follows a long history of people accusing Walz of misrepresenting their identity and history, in particular a group of veterans who accuse the Gopher State Democrat of misrepresenting his military career.

Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring in 2005, when he launched a successful congressional campaign and served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Minnesota from 2007 to 2019.

After Vice President Kamala Harris named him as her running mate, Walz came under fire from several veterans for allegedly misrepresenting his service in the military, even identifying himself to the public as a retired “command sergeant major.”

The latest on vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s time in the military

Walz was promoted to the rank of command sergeant major after a deployment to Italy in 2004, but he did not complete coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy to retain the rank upon his retirement. Instead, Walz retired as a master sergeant, one pay grade below that of command sergeant major.

“For 20 years, they allowed this guy to carry on the lie that he had been deployed to Iraq, which he didn’t, and that he had retired as a command sergeant major, which he didn’t. I mean, these are outright lies,” Virginia Republican Senate candidate Hung Cao, a retired Navy captain, told the New York Post this month, referring to Walz.

The battalion commander of Walz’s former Minnesota Army National Guard unit also issued a scathing message to Harris’ running mate earlier this month regarding his portrayal as a “retired command sergeant major.”