Dalleo: Walz’s character deserving of our votes

I’m from a family of teachers, and it’s very satisfying for me to see that the new vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, and his wife, Gwen Walz, are both high school teachers. I understand their world, and they understand mine. I learned about their characters by looking at how they chose to serve their schools beyond their teaching responsibilities. Tim coached football; Gwen coached cheerleading. They together led an Earth Day event at their school. When Tim saw bullying of a gay student, he responded by being a faculty sponsor for a gay-straight alliance, to get each group to understand the other group.

As governor, he has championed many policies to help average people navigate the challenges in their lives. He signed a law to have prescription prices published, to bring transparency to high and climbing drug costs. He supported school lunch programs. As a gun owner and hunter himself, he backed red flag laws and universal background laws.

Gwen has lived the painful journey of infertility, from using IVF to having a family of two children. Republicans on the other side want policies that make birth control and infertility treatments prohibited, taking banning abortion access to the extreme. Tim is refreshingly plainspoken about these individual freedoms. And, best of all, on so many issues like women’s health care choices, he coined the phrase, “Mind your own damn business!”

Bruce Dalleo

Wilmington

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