Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been accused of fabricating details of an incident he claims sparked his political career, where he was turned away from a 2004 re-election campaign rally for President George W. Bush and promptly vowed to run for public office. In the so-called “origin story,” Walz, then a high school geography teacher, claimed he and two of his students were held up by security and “denied entry” to the event because one of the youths had a sticker on his wallet supporting Bush’s opponent, then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass. However, the Washington Examiner reported that neither of the teens were Walz’s students and were not refused a spot at the Bush rally because of the Kerry sticker. The paper also noted that Walz was not a disinterested observer of the 2004 race, having picketed Bush as a “Veteran for Kerry” days before the campaign event in Mankato.
