A firestorm has reignited around Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after his selection as the running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential bid. Allegations about his honesty with voters regarding his military service have plagued Walz before, and it is a concern that doesn’t appear to be going away — especially if those who served with him have their way.

Multiple former service members have accused the governor of “stolen valor” because he has repeatedly tried to couch his conditional promotion to command sergeant major and subsequent demotion to master sergeant. The facts aren’t really in dispute, but whether he is being forthcoming in his public statements is hotly disputed.

Walz first enlisted in the Nebraska National Guard in 1981 as a young man and eventually transferred to the Minnesota National Guard. He continued to serve there part-time while teaching, eventually accruing 20 years of eligible service. In 2001, he reenlisted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with a six-year commitment.

He was conditionally promoted to command sergeant major during this time, which placed him at risk of having the promotion revoked if he failed to complete his minimum length of service obligation and pass the Army’s Sergeant Major Course. He elected to retire abruptly after about four years of total additional service and failed to complete his obligation. In September 2005, the paperwork caught up with him, and his promotion was officially rescinded. 

Alleged Stolen Valor

The commonly accepted definition of stolen valor includes misrepresenting the scope of one’s military service. For his part, the man who replaced Walz and eventually deployed to Iraq in his place — Command Sgt. Maj. Tom Behrends — claimed it is absolutely reflective of his character and integrity, saying, “The public needs to know how pathetic his leadership was as a National Guardsman.”

Behrends linked Walz’s abrupt retirement to the fact that the unit had received a warning order to deploy only a few months before Walz’s departure. “He abandoned us. What the hell kind of leader does that? As soon as the shots were fired in Iraq he turned and ran the other way and hung his hat up and quit,” Behrends said.

A Closer Look at Walz’s Service Record

To understand the issue fully, it’s important to understand the distinction between “frocking” and a conditional promotion. Frocking is a military tradition where service members are allowed to assume the duties and responsibilities of a higher rank before the official promotion becomes effective. Notably, they do not receive the full benefits or privileges afforded by the higher rank until the promotion is final. 

The conditional promotion, however, immediately confers all the benefits and privileges of the higher rank but lays out certain obligations that the service member must promise to fulfill or his promotion will be rescinded. This is what happened in the case of Walz’s short-lived promotion to command sergeant major. He wasn’t given a temporary privilege that expired when he left the service, but he was retroactively demoted in accordance with the agreement he signed and failed to live up to. His paperwork shows he retired as a master sergeant. 

Digging deeper into the NGB Form 22, Report of Separation and Record of Service for Walz, his date of rank for his promotion to command sergeant major (E9) was April 1, 2005. His date of discharge was May 16, 2005. Only 46 days had elapsed. Given the National Guard is a part-time job, one would be forgiven for wondering if this was even enough time to have new insignia sewn on all his uniforms. The official government paperwork marking his demotion was processed approximately four months later on Sept. 10.

Yet Tim Walz campaigned and marketed himself as a “retired” command sergeant major until the backlash caused him to fine-tune his messaging: In most of his literature now he’s careful to refer to himself as a “former” command sergeant major. In some places, he uses an “achieved the rank of” modifier to provide a fig leaf of plausibility to his puffery. His official Minnesota biography still refers to him as “Command Sergeant Major Walz.” Presumably, most ordinary voters won’t notice the sleight of hand, but one wonders why he doesn’t just say retired master sergeant.

Surely command sergeant major sounds much better than master sergeant. Maybe that’s been the point all along. But his insistence on maintaining his eligibility to use the rank of command sergeant major as part of his biography appears to be more about avoiding an embarrassing walk-back than anything.

Does it Really Matter?

A month out from the 2018 gubernatorial election, when Walz was ahead by 10 points, the news service of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) attempted to absolve him of the controversy by quoting a Minnesota National Guard public affairs officer, who as a guardsman technically worked for the incumbent Democrat governor and would soon work for the incoming Walz. She approvingly said, in the words of MPR, that “it is legitimate for Walz to say he served as a Command Sergeant Major.” But is a mid-level PR representative with conflicted loyalties really the authority on the issue?

Did the Harris camp vet any of this, or in their inexperience did they fall for the same gambit Walz pulled on his Minnesota voters and simply see “military service” and consider the box checked?