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.
Stella Hsu and Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
