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With President Joe Biden bowing out, Vice President Kamala Harris has stormed to the top of the Democratic ticket, stoking no small amount of enthusiasm among our liberal friends, and accomplishing a rare feat in modern American politics: occluding Donald Trump from the sort of non-stop media attention he typically enjoys.

Now Harris, with just 98 days to go until election day, is tasked with keeping that momentum going. One way she can do that is with a strong vice presidential pick. She's going to want someone who can keep Democrats stoked. She certainly doesn't want someone who could be a distraction in the way Sen. J.D. Vance has for Trump's ticket.

Can you imagine how furious the disgraced former president is right now? This preening narcissist has been one-upped not just by Harris's splashy entrance to the race but by the foibles and eccentricities of his own running mate, and he'll almost certainly be goaded into increasingly outlandish behavior to get the spotlight back, which may or may not redound to his benefit at the ballot box.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had a great line recently when he called Trump and his various fawning acolytes "weird." Democrats have embraced it as something of a slogan. It could be an effective one, and it's raised Walz's profile as a potential running mate for Harris.

But that, I think, would be a mistake. A Vance-level blunder, given that selecting Walz would open up a veritable supermarket of problematic anecdotes from his time as Minnesota's governor that could be an untimely wet blanket when Democrats need a bonfire of enthusiasm.

I'm not talking about ideological concerns. I'm talking about competency issues.

In 2022, Walz's administration lobbied for legislation providing "hero pay" for Minnesotans who served in key roles during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Walz administration estimated that some 667,000 workers would qualify for $500 payments. After the bill was signed into law, though, the Walz administration announced that meaning the original estimate on which the legislation was passed was off by nearly 50%.

An audit found that were eligible for them. Some, per the audit report, were dead for years before receiving payment.

A bad look, but even the most competently managed state governments can make mistakes. Yet this sort of mismanagement is a recurring theme from Walz's time in office.

The Feeding Our Future scandal saw more than a quarter-billion dollars worth of public funds diverted to luxury purchases like cars, homes, jewelry and more. When the Department of Justice it "was the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date."

The massive scale of this fraud was made possible because the Walz administration, through the Minnesota Department of Education, failed to act. 鈥淭ime and time again over the four years it participated in the federal nutrition programs, MDE missed opportunities to hold Feeding Our Future accountable,鈥�

"Between June 2018 and December 2021, the department received more than 30 complaints about the organization 鈥� ranging from unethical practices to demanding kickbacks from vendors 鈥� which must be investigated by law," "But the department鈥檚 investigation procedures were 'of limited usefulness' in the context of alleged fraud, the auditor found. At one point, the education department asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself. Some of the complaints weren鈥檛 looked into at all, 'despite their frequency and seriousness.'"

Another example of this pattern: found that the "Minnesota Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Division did not comply with certain grants management policies." The division "failed to complete financial assessments for more than 40 percent of grants reviewed. The grants ranged from $49,000 to nearly $1 million, and totaled $11.5 million. A 2021 audit had a similar finding."

Another audit released found that more than 30% of retroactive payments to state employees tested by auditors were inaccurate. The Walz administration hasn't remedied this problem.

In 2019, the Minnesota Department of Health announced that it for opioid treatments that were never administered.

Just last month, when Axios requested Gov. Walz's text messages under state open records laws, they were told that This, like the apparent mismanagement of public funds under the Walz administration, seems to be a pattern. The nonprofit Public Record Media has also criticized Walz for  During his 2018 campaign for governor, Walz  to the public and then reneged.

Sam Goetzinger / WDAY News

"奥补濒锄鈥檚 , his and one of his appointments to the gubernatorial Task Force on Broadband Jim Geraghty (my source for much of the above information).

I could continue, but I think you get the point.

Any one of these stories and scandals on their own don't amount to much. But collectively, they demonstrate something larger about Walz's approach to governance, and it doesn't exactly commend him to higher office.

I can understand why Minnesotans might be enthusiastic about one of their own being elevated to a national ticket. Certainly, that was the case here in North Dakota as we watched as Gov. Doug Burgum campaigned to the cusp of joining Trump on the ballot.

But Harris choosing Walz would be a debacle. Any candidate she chooses is going to have some baggage, but Walz has more than most, and his problems aren't ephemeral. They're rooted in questions of competence and integrity.