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Reporting Highlights
- A Close Relationship: Since the beginning of his political career, Gov. Tim Walz has maintained close ties to the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
- Mayo’s Influence: The hospital had considerable sway with the Obama administration as it crafted the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and it lobbied against a public option.
- Limits of Power: Mayo convinced Walz to help kill bills by threatening to withhold billions in investments. When Walz pushed back on Mayo’s plans for consolidation, he had little success.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
At the vice presidential debate against Republican Sen. JD Vance this month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did something he’s done throughout his nearly 20-year career in politics: name-drop the Mayo Clinic.
“If you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump,” Walz said.
Later in the debate, he did it again, after Vance criticized the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law that expanded access to health coverage.
“I come from a major health care state, home of the Mayo Clinic,” said Walz. “We understand health care.”
Walz’s high regard for the world-renowned hospital system in southeastern Minnesota makes sense — he represented the Rochester area in Congress for 12 years, and it’s where he and his wife, Gwen, sought fertility treatment before having their daughter, Hope. The nonprofit Mayo is the state’s largest employer with more than 50,000 employees.
On various occasions, Walz has also acquiesced to the wishes of Mayo, even when those were at odds with the goals of other allies. In 2023, for example, Mayo leveraged its plans for a $5 billion expansion in Minnesota to muscle Walz into helping kill a bill aimed at slowing the speed of rising health care costs, which had passed the state House and Senate.
Years earlier, while still in Congress, Walz tried to push back against Mayo when it consolidated services after gobbling up local hospitals across southern Minnesota. When Mayo announced in 2017 that it intended to close labor and delivery, surgery and intensive care units in the city of Albert Lea, Walz supported workers protesting the reductions as a part of a contract fight with the hospital. But Mayo did not change course.
“He probably could have done more,” said Brad Arends, one of the leaders of a group in Albert Lea called Save Our Hospital that tried to preserve services. “Mayo was the bright shining star and now Mayo is literally a four-letter word in Albert Lea.”
“Mayo,” he added, “has a way of hypnotizing people, especially probably politicians.”
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