washington — Who will she pick? That’s the big political question in America after U.S. President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who has quickly collected a critical mass of Democratic Party support and funding.
The selection in question is Harris’ running mate, the person who would step into the role she will shed if the Democrats are victorious in November’s presidential election against Republicans Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.
Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm are vetting Harris’ potential vice presidential candidates, according to media reports.
The campaign has requested vetting materials from five Democratic governors — Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tim Walz of Minnesota and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois — and one U.S. senator, Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Those who pass the vetting “will probably have a one-on-one conversation with Harris and then she’ll make a choice, probably in the week or so before the convention,” William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA. “The danger of an accelerated process is that you know things will be overlooked. Mistakes will be made that a more leisurely process would have prevented. But she has no choice. She has to do it fast and get it right.”
Quest to balance ticket
It “is most likely” that Harris, as the daughter of a Black father and a mother who emigrated from India, will choose a white man to be her number two, according to Joel K. Goldstein, a scholar of U.S. vice presidents and the Vincent C. Immel professor of law emeritus at the St. Louis University School of Law.
Geographical balance is another factor. Harris, who is from California, a solidly Democratic state, likely desires someone who can boost the party’s chance in one of the critical swing states — territory that spans westward from Pennsylvania to Michigan, as well as the southern state of Georgia.
“Someone from the Midwest or even from the South would be a good choice,” said Jay Chen, Democratic National Committee delegate from California and co-chair of Taiwanese Americans for Progress.
“Andy Beshear, he’s a governor from Kentucky. I think he would make a good choice. We want to make sure that we’re balancing out the ticket, because we have someone [Harris] from California,” said Chen. “I think we do have to make sure that folks in the Midwest on the East Coast from the South, that they don’t feel like they’re going to be ignored by this administration and this is an excellent opportunity to try to try to balance out the ticket.”
Historically, geographic balance “was perhaps the most common type of balance that you would see on tickets,” according to Goldstein. Nowadays, “the idea of geographic balance is not really as important a calculation as some other things.”
The governors of both Pennsylvania and Michigan, who are Democrats, endorsed Harris on Monday. That quashed any speculation that Shapiro or Whitmer might challenge Harris for delegates ahead of the party’s national nominating convention next month. It also appeared to automatically place them into consideration to be the vice presidential nominee.
Pennsylvania in play
Pennsylvania is practically a must-win for either party. The Keystone State offers 19 electoral votes — the most of any 2024 battleground state — of the 270 required to reach the threshold for victory in a U.S. presidential election.
In an on-air conversation about Shapiro, CNN chief national correspondent John King said the governor is a contender, but “he’s Jewish. There could be some risks with putting him on the ticket.”
Commentators on social media quickly responded that Harris may be hesitant to select Shapiro, who is a strong supporter of Israel, as he could jeopardize her chances in Michigan, where there has been a primary election backlash against the Biden-Harris ticket from Arab American voters because of the president’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas.
“It says a lot about the state of American politics, and perhaps especially in progressive circles that one of the ‘cons’ of Kamala Harris selecting” Shapiro as her vice president, is that he is Jewish and the pushback this might receive, Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, a global network of lawyers supporting Israel, wrote on X on Sunday.
Harris’ husband, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish.
There has never been a Jewish president or vice president in the United States. Democrat Al Gore in 2000 selected a Jewish U.S. senator, Joe Liberman, as his running mate on the ticket that lost to Republican’s George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Jews comprise less than 3% of the American population but play an outsized role in academia, business, law, the U.S. Congress, popular culture and, as has been the case with other minorities, traditionally faced institutional discrimination. Antisemitism has resurged in recent years on both the far left and far right.
The Illinois governor is also Jewish. Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, runs a state that has a large bounty of 19 electoral votes and is considered reliably blue (Democratic).
Pritzker denied in an MSNBC interview on Tuesday that he had received a request for vetting materials from the Harris campaign. Asked if he is interested in running with her, he avoided giving a direct answer.
“I love being the governor of the state of Illinois, and I’ve been out on the campaign trail fighting hard for Democrats to win,” he responded.
A possible first
The governor of Michigan (15 electoral votes) on the ticket with Harris would present an unprecedented combination — female candidates for both president and vice president.
Whitmer on Monday dampened such speculation.
“No, I am not planning to go anywhere,” she told a reporter from WLNS TV on Monday, who asked Whitmer if she would be willing to accept an offer to join Harris on the party ticket. “I am not leaving Michigan.”
No other woman is known to be under consideration by the Harris campaign.
The Republicans once nominated a woman as their vice presidential candidate. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was selected by Senator John McCain in the 2008 election that saw Barack Obama, a Democrat, elected as the country’s first African American president.
The Democrats are also the only major party to have nominated a woman for president. Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state and the wife of former President Bill Clinton, won the popular vote in 2016, but Trump captured the most electoral votes, thus becoming president.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was elected in 2016 and again in 2020, despite Trump winning the state on the same ballot both times. Cooper is term-limited and cannot seek reelection in the Tar Hill State, which holds 16 electoral votes.
Cooper was asked repeatedly during a Monday appearance on MSNBC whether he would consider the Number 2 spot if offered by Harris.
“I appreciate people talking about me,” he said, “But I think the focus right now needs to be on her this week.”
Then there is Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky (eight electoral votes), whose state some decades ago turned reliably Republican red in presidential contests. The last time a majority of Kentuckians chose a Democrat for president was in 1996, when Bill Clinton, successfully running for reelection, bested former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole in the Bluegrass State.
Some suggest a nonpolitician
Senator Mark Kelly is the sole non-governor known to be under consideration. Arizona is a Southwestern swing state with 11 electoral votes. A former Navy combat pilot and retired astronaut, Kelly is married to former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who resigned in 2012 due to severe brain injury caused by an assassination attempt.
There are suggestions Harris should think outside the box and choose a nonpolitician, such as a retired general, to bolster her chances with conservative-leaning independent voters concerned about Trump returning as commander-in-chief.
Law professor Goldstein, author of two books about the evolution of the role of the American vice presidency, does not expect that will happen.
“Every first-time vice presidential pick since 1940 has been either a current or former United States senator, governor, member of the House of Representative or a person who held high federal executive office,” he said. “So, it would be surprising if the choice was somebody who came from the military.”
These days, Goldstein told VOA, the primary consideration for selecting a vice presidential candidate is whether they have “the caliber that they are plausible as president, at least in the eyes of people who might support the ticket, or they have the stature and the ability [that] they can take on the sort of assignments that Vice President Harris has the last three and a half years.”
Stella Hsu and Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
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