Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is facing another accusation of misrepresenting his background after a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce letter from 2006 resurfaced amid Walz’s campaign for vice president. 

When Walz first ran for Congress in Minnesota, he touted on his campaign website that he received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce in 1993 for his work with the business community, according to a 2006 article from the Post Bulletin. 

He never received such an award, however, which was outlined to him in a blistering letter from the then-president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, Barry L. Kennedy. 

“We researched this matter and can confirm that you have not been the recipient of any award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce,” the letter addressed to Walz on Nov. 1, 2006, reads. 

FLASHBACK: OBAMA WAS ONE OF EARLIEST BIG-NAME DEMS TO ENDORSE WALZ AT DAWN OF HIS POLITICAL CAREER

“I am not going to draw a conclusion about your intentions by including this line in your biography. However, we respectfully request that you remove any reference to our organization as it could be considered an endorsement of your candidacy. It should be pointed out, however, that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed your opponent, Congressman Gil Gutknecht, for his support of small business issues,” Kennedy continued. 

The letter was unearthed by Minnesota outlet Alpha News last week, after the controversy gained traction locally in 2006. 

TIM WALZ SLAMMED AS ‘POLITICAL CHAMELEON’ AFTER DITCHING FORMER PRO-SECOND AMENDMENT STANCE

The Post Bulletin, a Minnesota newspaper based in Rochester, reported in 2006 that Walz’s congressional campaign updated its website to reflect Walz did not win a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce award, but had won an award from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce, known as the Jaycees. The then-campaign manager passed off the issue as a “typographical error,” the outlet reported at the time. 

When approached by Fox Digital about the 2006 controversy, the Harris-Walz campaign said Walz frequently speaks “openly and off the cuff.”

“Governor Walz speaks the way real people speak – openly and off the cuff. The American people appreciate that Gov. Walz tells it like it is and doesn’t talk like a politician, and they appreciate the difference between someone who occasionally misspeaks and a pathological liar like Donald Trump,” the campaign said. 

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, hold a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Aug. 20, 2024. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

The claim follows a long history of people accusing Walz of misrepresenting himself and his history, most notably a bevy of veterans accusing the Gopher State Democrat of misrepresenting his military career. 

Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring in 2005, when he launched a successful congressional campaign and served as a member of the U.S. House representing Minnesota from 2007 until 2019. 

Following Vice President Kamala Harris naming him as her running mate, Walz has been slammed by a number of veterans for allegedly misrepresenting his service in the military, including identifying himself to the public as a retired “Command Sergeant Major.”

TRUMP CAMP SAYS HARRIS-WALZ ‘DANGEROUSLY LIBERAL’ TICKET IS ‘EVERY AMERICAN’S NIGHTMARE’

Walz was promoted to the command sergeant major rank following a deployment to Italy in 2004, but he did not complete coursework with the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy to retain the rank in retirement. Walz instead retired as a master sergeant, one pay grade below command sergeant major. 

“For 20 years, they let this guy go by with a lie that he deployed to Iraq, which he didn’t, and that he retired as a command sergeant major, which he did not. I mean, that’s just blatant lies,” Republican Virginia Senate candidate Hung Cao, a retired Navy captain, told The New York Post this month of Walz. 

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks during a campaign rally at Temple University on Aug. 6, 2024, in Philadelphia. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The battalion commander of Walz’s former Minnesota Army National Guard unit also issued a scathing message to Harris’ running mate earlier this month regarding him portraying himself as a “retired Command Sergeant Major.” 

VAN JONES: WALZ NEEDS TO ADMIT HE EXAGGERATED MILITARY RECORD SO DEMS CAN ‘MOVE ON’

“He did not earn the rank or successfully complete any assignment as an E9,” John Kolb, who served as a lieutenant colonel of the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery from 2005 to 2007, wrote in a social media post this month. “It is an affront to the Noncommissioned Officer Corps that he continues to glom onto the title. I can sit in the cockpit of an airplane, it does not make me a pilot. Similarly, when the demands of service and leadership at the highest level got real, he chose another path.”

The “retired Command Sergeant Major” rank was promoted by the Harris campaign until earlier this month, when it changed Walz’s biography on the campaign’s website to read that he “served as a command sergeant major.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

When Kamala Harris was formally installed as the Democratic presidential nominee, her home-state delegation had the best seats in the house, right up front.

Visions of the Golden State and a parade of its personalities filled the convention’s four-day program, and passes to California’s after-parties — featuring appearances by John Legend, the Killers and Oakland’s Tony! Toni! Toné — were among the hottest tickets in Chicago.

Suddenly, California is at the center of politics, in a way the nation’s most important and populous state hasn’t been since former Gov. Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

A California Democrat sits atop the party’s presidential ticket for the first time in history, thanks in good part to the machinations of another California Democrat who helped elbow the incumbent — and nominee-in-waiting — aside.

“California is having a moment,” said Don Sipple, a political strategist who helped elect several of the state’s governors, because of “the woman who opened the door and the woman who walked through it.”

(Though, it should be noted, the door-opening woman, Nancy Pelosi, and Harris have never been close. The former House speaker publicly spoke of an “open process” to replace President Biden before endorsing his vice president as the best alternative after Biden gave up his reelection bid.)

With heightened attention comes greater scrutiny, and with that added scrutiny comes a fight to define California — and, by extension, Harris — for the rest of America.

The outcome could very well determine who wins in November.

Is California a sun-kissed incubator of innovation and opportunity that continues to beckon doers and dreamers from the world over, as it has for well over 150 years?

Or is it an overburdened and overstretched collection of struggling communities that fail to provide even the basics — safety, clean shelter, sustaining livelihoods — for a shamefully large portion of its population?

Yes and yes.

“There is plenty of evidence” to support both views, said Jack Pitney, a former Republican operative and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. He paraphrased Walt Whitman.

“California is large. It contains multitudes,” Pitney said. “It is possible for two things to be true at once.”

Red and blue America. Prosperous and failing California. Two ways of seeing the same thing.

Bill Carrick, longtime political advisor to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, scoffed at the notion that Harris’ home state will hang like a millstone around the vice president’s neck.

“Ultimately, a presidential campaign is about picking someone who you think will make your life better,” said Carrick, who has worked extensively in national politics. It’s not, he said, about a candidate’s return address.

Sure, Carrick went on, “there are some ideological Republicans who are devoted to Trump” and who eagerly lap up the California-as-hellhole narrative — but “we’re not going to get them anyway.”

Most voters, or at least those who are open to supporting Harris, know very little about the vice president. That, Carrick said, gives her an opportunity to introduce herself — and her home state — on her own terms, “as opposed to the Republican cartoon characterization.”

Maybe so.

But Trump and his fellow Republicans, abetted by Fox News and other sympathetic media, will make a case that California is a case study in what goes wrong when Democrats are put in charge. They will hold up Harris, a statewide officeholder for more than a dozen years, as the prime example of its destructive ruling class.

That vastly overstates her power and influence, first as attorney general and then for a relatively brief stint as one of California’s two U.S. senators. But that detail will surely be lost in the fog of campaign warfare.

Harris is, however, an exemplar of her home state in one significant way.

There’s no doubting she reflects the politics and makeup of modern California, just as the two presidents the state yielded, Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, embodied the California of their day and age.

The two men rose to power at a time when California was mostly white and reliably Republican, with a broad and deep conservative streak. By the time Harris arrived in Sacramento after being elected attorney general in 2010, the state was solidly Democratic, increasingly liberal and had more Black and brown than white residents. Not least, there were also significantly more opportunities for a woman in politics.

In that way, Harris and Reagan serve as perfect bookends to the state they represented.

Given the changes of the last 30-plus years, it’s surprising California Democrats haven’t managed to put one of their own in the White House, said Jim Newton, a biographer and state historian.

“We think of it as such an exceptionally blue place,” he said, “and it’s produced so many national Democratic leaders.”

Among them, the legendarily powerful Rep. Phillip Burton, Pelosi (who succeeded Burton’s widow in representing San Francisco in Congress), and Feinstein. But until Biden chose Harris as his running mate, no California Democrat had come remotely near the White House, though several tried.

Of course, Harris wouldn’t have this shot at the presidency but for a unique set of circumstances. If Biden hadn’t performed so terribly in that June debate, if Democrats hadn’t panicked afterward, if Pelosi and other party leaders hadn’t maneuvered to shove the president aside, the vice president could very well have been out of a job come January.

That still might happen. But give Harris her due for getting where she is. After 20 years in politics, she stands within hailing distance of the White House and making further history from a geographic standpoint.

In politics, as so often in life, timing is everything.

The car industry is backing away from rolling out electric vehicles in favor of hybrid options, indicating more defeats to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force EV sales on American buyers. 

Ford announced last week that the car giant is changing its electric vehicle strategy and backing away from its planned all-electric, three-row SUV, instead favoring the creation of hybrid vehicles for its next rollout of three-row SUVs. 

“Our focus here is to remake Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, more capital-efficient and durable business, and that means these vehicles need to be profitable,” John Lawler, Ford vice chair and chief financial officer, said on a call with media Wednesday morning. “And if they’re not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”

The announcement is a blow to left-wing electric car initiatives, many of which have been promoted by Harris across her last three and a half years as vice president. 

KAMALA HARRIS MOCKED FOR GUSHING OVER A ‘YELLOW SCHOOL BUS’: ‘THEY REALLY CAN’T LET HER TALK IN PUBLIC’

“It is abundantly clear that the federal government’s push to ram electric vehicles down everyone’s throat was unwanted and unworkable. The mandates forced on Americans under Biden-Harris will dismantle what remains of Michigan’s industrial base, destroy American jobs, and make us more dependent on Communist China,” Republican Michigan congressional candidate Tom Barrett told Fox News Digital in reaction to Dearborn-based Ford’s move last week. “In Congress, I will continue my fight to protect the rights of consumers to purchase the vehicle that meet their needs and their family’s budget, not the social engineering agenda of bureaucrats in Washington.”

AUTO INDUSTRY EXPERTS WARN BIDEN’S EV MANDATE MAY LIMIT GAS CAR OPTIONS IN THE FUTURE

Fox News Digital examined Harris’ record and involvement with the electric vehicle push and programs amid her vice presidency, and found the Democrat has had a heavy hand in promoting the end to traditional gas-powered vehicles. Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket last month, after President Biden exited the race amid mounting concerns over his mental acuity and 81 years of age. 

Stretching back to her Senate career, Harris was one of the original co-signers of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Markey’s, D-Mass., 2019 Green New Deal legislation, which worked to establish a blueprint to shift the nation to 100% “clean energy” by 2040. The measure failed in the Senate. 

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden on the campaign trail together. (Getty Images)

After the Biden-Harris ticket won the 2020 election, Harris continued spearheading climate change initiatives, most notably taking charge of the Clean School Bus program. The EPA-backed program was created nearly three years ago as a provision under the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure bill, and allocated $5 billion for the program. The EPA has since made $1 billion in grants available to help deliver nearly 2,500 electric school buses to school districts across the nation. 

FORD CANCELS PLANS FOR ELECTRIC THREE-ROW SUV

Harris and EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan were touted by the federal government as the point people for the program, but it has only delivered 60 battery-electric or low-emissions propane-fueled school buses, the Washington Free Beacon reported last month. 

“Every school day, 25 million children ride our nation’s largest form of mass transit: the school bus. The vast majority of those buses run on diesel, exposing students, teachers, and bus drivers to toxic air pollution,” Harris said of the program earlier this year. “Today, we are announcing nearly $1 billion to fund clean school buses across the nation. As part of our work to tackle the climate crisis, the historic funding we are announcing today is an investment in our children, their health, and their education. It also strengthens our economy by investing in American manufacturing and America’s workforce.”

Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and gushed about her love of yellow school buses. (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)

Amid the bus plan rollout, Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and gushed about her love of yellow school buses – comments that were subsequently mocked on social media. 

“Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up. It’s part of a nostalgia, a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there,” Harris said in the rambling remarks. 

Critics quickly shot back that Democrats “really can’t let [Harris] talk in public about anything.” 

FORD’S PROFITS GETTING EATEN UP BY EVS

“Democrats have been hiding Kamala, but she just had a press conference and talked about yellow school buses and my goodness they really can’t let her talk in public about anything,” OutKick founder Clay Travis posted on X at the time. 

“Selina Meyer,” The Federalist author Eddie Scarry tweeted, referencing Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character on the HBO comedy “Veep.”

Republican activist Matthew Foldi tweeted, “Find yourself someone who loves you as much as Kamala Harris loves Venn diagrams and yellow school buses.”

CNN contributor Mary Katherine Ham also joked, “Please sing Wheels on the Bus, please sing Wheels on the Bus.”

Harris was in fact caught on camera awkwardly singing “the wheels on the bus go round and round,” in another viral moment. 

Harris was also charged with helping lead the “Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan” in December 2021, to ensure 50% of car sales were electric vehicles by 2030. The Biden-Harris administration further cracked down on the plan this year with one of the most significant climate regulations in U.S. history – it would force half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 to be electric. 

“Together, we’ve made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead,” Biden said in March of the plan. 

The $7.5 billion federal program, which was part of 2021’s infrastructure bill, aimed to install half a million EV charging stations across the nation, but has only produced as many as eight federal charging stations as of May. 

FORMER AUTO EXECUTIVES WARN ELECTRIC VEHICLE PUSH HAPPENED ‘TOO SOON AND TOO FAST’

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was confronted with the lack of charging stations in May on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” when host Margaret Brennan grilled him as to why only up to eight stations had been installed. 

“Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plugging a small device into the ground,” the secretary said. “There’s utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states.”

“Seven or eight, though?” Brennan said with a laugh.

“Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers,” Buttigieg said. “And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built.”

Electric vehicle plugged in at a charging station. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Car industry leaders have long argued that the push by Democrats – most notably the Biden-Harris administration – for EVs was rolled out too quickly and will likely fail. 

“The problem with the whole EV movement is that there was a colossal amount of hype behind it, largely from what I like to call the liberal mainstream media, making it sound like everybody’s next vehicle was going to be an EV,” former Ford, Chrysler and General Motors executive Bob Lutz told Fox Digital in April. “And of course, the government was pushing it, because of their climate change policies. And it just plain wasn’t going to happen.”

“And yes, it did come too soon and too fast,” he added. 

Earlier this year, data found that electric vehicles were eating into Ford’s profit margin. Ford Model e, the company’s EV division, had a net loss of $4.7 billion last year – with $1.6 billion of that in the last quarter – and Ford’s chief financial officer John Lawler explained during the company’s earnings call in February that both “the quarter and year were impacted by challenging market dynamics and investments in next-generation vehicles.” 

BIDEN FINALIZES CRACKDOWN ON GAS CARS, FORCING MORE THAN HALF OF NEW CAR SALES TO BE ELECTRIC BY 2030

President Biden participates in stage testing ahead of the start of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Ford, which is the second-largest EV brand in the nation behind Tesla, said last week when announcing its shift in its EV strategy that it will face a $400 million write-down of “certain product-specific manufacturing assets” for canceling the EV SUV. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Ford Sunday for additional comment on its future with EVs, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

HEY JOE BIDEN, HOW MANY EV CHARGING STATIONS HAVE YOU BUILT? 3 LESSONS FROM THIS MONUMENTAL SCREWUP

As Democrats continue championing the frenzied electric vehicle push, former President Trump has vowed to end the Biden administration’s “mandate” increasing the sales of electric vehicles. 

Former President Trump laughs while responding to a queston from a reporter after his remarks on Aug. 20, 2024, at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one. Thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now, and saving U.S. customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car,” he said from the RNC in Milwaukee last month. 

Trump again discussed electric vehicles in his interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk earlier this month. Musk’s Tesla is the nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. Trump explained that Musk’s cars are “incredible,” but that fossil fuels are deeply intertwined with even building EVs and that the U.S. needs to “drill, baby, drill.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the state of EVs just days after she accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

Fox News’ Kristen Altus and Eric Revell contributed to this report. 

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.