Opinion: Republicans' 'Tampon Tim' joke about Walz is already backfiring (2024)

Before Tuesday, vice presidential contender Tim Walz was hardly a household name. Now that the Minnesota governor has been the subject of round-the-clock news interviews and viral videos, he has also picked up a new nickname. Enter “Tampon Tim,” conservatives’ response to the 2024 state law Walz signed that requires public schools to provide menstrual products in student bathrooms.

It hardly feels like much of a “gotcha” moniker, though. Periods have been a mainstream public policy priority for the better part of the last decade. And California has been at the forefront. Since 2017, the Legislature has passed a series of laws — including ones that eliminate the state sales tax on menstrual products; mandate the provision of menstrual products in all public school restrooms for students in grades 6-12, as well as at California state universities; and require county jails and state prisons to provide free access to tampons and pads to people who are incarcerated.

California has also proposed legislation to improve public health disclosure requirements around the ingredients in menstrual products — an especially timely effort in light of recent headlines: A study last month out of UC Berkeley shows that toxic chemicals including lead and arsenic were found in several name-brand tampons.

While California is a leader, it is hardly an outlier. It is one of 30 states that have scrapped the “tampon tax” in the past eight years; the latest to join the roster is Texas, with a signature from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on a bill that garnered notable bipartisan support. Across the country, 28 states also mandate the provision of menstrual products in public schools; another 25 states require the same in their jails and prisons.

In an era of often intractable political polarization, menstrual policy has proven something of a unicorn. Hardly the butt of jokes, “menstrual equity” is a bipartisan agenda on which the two major parties have found common ground — and agree that ameliorating the economic burden and easing the stigma of menstruation is plain common sense.

So why the Tampon Tim uproar? Mostly it is about the language of the Minnesota law, which states that pads and tampons must be available to “all menstruating students” and “in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12,” rather than qualifying that only “female restrooms” stock the products. Though an amendment to alter the wording failed, it did not set off a culture war, nor did it stymie support for the bill. One Republican lawmaker, Dean Urdahl, remarked, “Just talking with my wife and family members, they felt like it was an important issue I should support.”

Making menstruation into an internet meme seems destined to backfire now too. To begin with, who but silly preteens does that? As Walz would say, it is just plain weird.

Second, recent elections and polling show that reproductive health and rights are wildly popular to voters. As a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris is a strong, steady voice — including on an array of adjacent issues like menstrual literacy and the need for data protection regarding period tracking apps. (I joined a White House discussion with her on those topics after the Supreme Court decision that reversed Roe vs. Wade.)

Republicans know their positions on reproductive rights are out of step with popular opinion — so much so that they barely whispered it at their national convention last month. They have more substantive damage control to do for their own vice presidential candidate. JD Vance’s controversial commentary about “childless cat ladies” and assisted fertility might just be bested by his own congressional voting record — which includes … wait for it … enabling menstrual cycle surveillance by state law enforcement agencies. And lest we forget Trump’s own crude remarks on the matter: On Aug. 8, 2015, he accused newscaster Megyn Kelly of having “blood coming out of her wherever.”

Gone are the days when periods were a punchline. In 2024, they may well prove to be the most powerful political rallying cry. Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton posted this week that it was “nice of the Trump camp to help publicize Gov. Tim Walz’s compassionate and common-sense policy.”

She added, “Let’s do this everywhere.” Hear, hear.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at New York University School of Law, is the author of “Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity” and the forthcoming “Period. Full Stop. The Politics of Menopause.”