Less than twenty-four hours after Kamala Harris introduced him as the future, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz's past has come back to haunt him.
It has come in the form of a resurfaced mugshot – grainy black and white proof of a crime and a moment he would much rather forget.
The picture, obtained by DailyMail.com, shows a glassy-eyed Walz moments after he was arrested September 30, 1995, and booked into Dawes County Jail, Nebraska, on charges of speeding and driving while intoxicated.
The Minnesotagovernor was a 31-year-old schoolteacher and football coach in Alliance, Nebraska, when he was chased down by a State patrol officer and charged for driving at a whopping 96mph in a 55mph zone. He was also serving in the Army National Guard.
Glassy-eyed Tim Walz is seen posing for his mugshot moments after his DUI arrest in Nebraska in September 1995
Walz's brush with law resurfaced just hours after Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate on Tuesday
He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving when his attorney raised an extraordinary defense that, he argued, would see the results of his breathalyzer test suppressed should the case go to trial.
Despite the trooper's report stating: 'A strong odor of alcoholic beverage was detected on Mr. Walz breath and person,' and the fact that he failed both a field sobriety test, breath test and blood test, his attorney said the DUI charge should be dropped.
Walz was brought to Chadron Hospital for a blood test and was booked at Dawes County Jail.
According to a court transcript, Walz had a blood alcohol concentration of .128.
Court transcripts reviewed by DailyMail.com show that Walz's attorney Russell Harford claimed his client's speeding was due not to inebriation but to the fact that Walz had a hearing impairment which led him to believe that the officer attempting to stop him was chasing him.
He explained: 'He initially, I think, was clocked by one of the state patrol officers at about 70.
'The officer didn't turn on his red lights and he…somebody came up real fast behind him and he didn't know what they were doing so he sped up to try and get away, fearing that somebody was after him.
'Lo and behold it was a state patrolman that was behind him, so the faster he went the faster the state patrol officer went. Finally, he did turn on his red lights.
His lawyer said hearing loss played a role in his DUI arrest back in 1995
A police report of the incident says Walz failed a field sobriety and preliminary breath test before he was brought to Chadron Hospital for a blood test on September 23, 1995
At the time of the arrest, Walz was teaching and living in Nebraska with his new wife Gwen, to whom he is still married and shares two children. He was also serving in the Army National Guard
'The speed was fairly excessive, Judge, a lot over the speed limit. I don't even know what was alleged in the complaint. It may have been ninety something.'
Harford offered no explanation as to why the teacher and football coach would have believed anybody was 'after him' but pointed out that the court had suppressed test results in prior cases where hearing impairment had played a part.
He went on to inform the court that Walz felt 'terrible' about the whole affair and that he had immediately offered to resign from his position at Alliance High School – an offer the principal 'talked him out of'.
He added: 'Mr. Walz now, I think, has taken the opportunity to turn this into a positive for him and his students by ministering, I guess, so-to-speak to the students about all the bad things that can happen to you if you drink and drive and get caught for drinking and driving.'
By the time his case reached court Walz had already lost his license administratively for 90 days and, his lawyer said, 'jumped through all the hoops to be reinstated.'
He was ultimately fined $200 and court costs.
The Harris camp believes Walz will be able to reach out to rural voters in the Midwest
These days Harris's running mate doesn't drink anything stronger than Mountain Dew, of which he is a huge fan, after quitting alcohol following his brush with the law 19 years ago.
The incident first resurfaced during Walz's 2006 campaign for congress at which time a spokesman claimed that Walz, 60, simply, 'couldn't understand what the officer was saying to him'.
Kerry Greeley, Walz's campaign manager at the time, told a reporter for the Rochester Post, that it was Walz's deafness from which he suffered thanks to his time serving with an artillery unit in the National Guard, lead to a miscommunication between Walz and the officer who stopped him.
There is no mention of Walz having any hearing impairment in the officer's report and it is reference only obliquely in the court proceedings that followed, but according to the New York Times he underwent corrective surgery in 2005.
But in 2018 and his first gubernatorial run Walz acknowledged the sobriety issue saying he'd been watching college football with some friends and revealed that his wife Gwen had told him: 'You have obligations. You can't make dumb choices.'
