List of Democrats who could be Kamala Harris’s vice presidential running mate
The style manual of American politics, always so influenced by elections and electoral surgery, says that the vice-presidential pick should complement the president’s profile. For this reason, Donald Trump, a comfortably born New Yorker, chose as his ticket mate Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who is twice his age and comes from a working-class and unstructured family in Appalachia. Or a young African-American who has been in politics for barely a decade like Barack Obama chose an established white senator of Irish descent like Joe Biden. Now that the president has given up his reelection bid and handed the baton to his vice-president, an African-American woman of Asian descent, it is up to Kamala Harris to announce her decision.
Harris must choose her running mate before the Aug. 7 Ohio filing deadline.
The general assumption is that he or she will be a white man from the US Rust Belt, where three of the six key states are located: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But that doesn’t have to be the case. For example, Californians could choose Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a rising figure in the party with charisma, plain language and popular policies. swing state From the Midwest. Or Wes Moore, Maryland’s first African-American governor, businessman, and armed forces veteran.
The choice of a woman or an African American, or both, in a profile could help highlight the contrast between his candidacy and that of a rival composed of two white men, and would be a historical fact: never has a presidential ballot been composed of two women or two African Americans. But according to pollsters, the bet seems risky, in a country that has never elected a woman as president and commander in chief of the armed forces, and where only one African American has reached the Oval Office.
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At the moment, the name that is ringing loudest is that of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a 51-year-old rising star of the Democratic Party. He was born in Kansas City (Missouri) and grew up in Pennsylvania, a pendulum state where he enjoys popularity. There he was attorney general from 2017 to 2023, a position in which he dealt with controversial cases such as alleged sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and opposed the travel ban imposed by Trump on people from Muslim countries.
He became governor after winning the 2022 midterm elections, receiving 56% of the vote with a speech in favor of abortion rights and against the deployment of the National Guard to oppose the entry of immigrants into the state. In addition, Shapiro is Jewish and, like most Americans, is a staunch defender of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which complements the speech condemning the genocide given by Harris on Thursday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The governor immediately defended Harris’ candidacy when, that same Sunday, after Biden announced his decision to step down, he wrote in a statement that he had known the vice president for nearly two decades: “We have both been prosecutors, we have both defended the state, we have both fought for the people and achieved results.”
Roy Cooper won the North Carolina gubernatorial election by 4 points, while Biden lost that state to Trump
Also on Harris’ unofficial list of potential vice presidential candidates is North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who has known Harris for more than a decade. He worked with her when he was the state’s attorney general and she held the same position in California. At 67, he is serving his second term as governor in a state that has voted Republican since 1980, except for 2008, when Obama won by less than a half-point.
In 2020, when Trump won by 1.3 points over Biden, Cooper was re-elected by a 4-point margin. If she joins the race, the state could become more competitive and Harris could capture all of its 16 electoral college delegates. The governor could attract votes from moderate Republicans and independents: She has shown a willingness to cross party lines and has reached agreements with Republicans to attract jobs to the state, in addition to growing its economy.
And he’s committed to some of the issues on the progressive agenda: He’s prioritized funding public education, raising teacher salaries, expanding Medicaid, and fighting climate change. A day after Harris filed her candidacy, Cooper told MSNBC he supports her: “If you want a candidate who will talk about Donald Trump’s destruction of abortion rights, if you want a candidate who prosecutes criminals like Trump, and if you want a candidate who can take Trump’s age and physical condition out of the spotlight, Kamala Harris is that person.”
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If it comes to male and white governors, another option in the pool is Andy Beshear, the 46-year-old governor of Kentucky. His profile would be a clear complement to the urban and progressive vote that Harris already has in her pocket. He has been able to win two elections in a clearly red (Republican) state, which Trump won by a margin of 26 points in 2020 and by a margin of 30 points in 2016, and where only Republican candidates have won presidential elections this century.
Beshear, who took office in 2019, has also been able to collaborate with Republicans on economic issues in Kentucky. He is a Christian and often refers to his faith, which may be attractive to centrist voters. Despite coming from a very conservative state, as governor he has dared to veto laws against abortion and care for transgender youth (though his veto was ultimately overturned by the Republican-majority legislature). He has also been active in expanding Medicare and investing in public education.
When asked about Harris’ candidacy, he defended on Monday that she is the one who can lead the country “towards something better” and attacked Trump’s running mate, Vance, for changing his opinion about the former president: “J.D. Vance he’s a fake. First he says Trump is like Hitler, and now he behaves like he’s Lincoln.”
Democrats could nominate Harris in virtual vote next week
For now, Harris’s polling is a mystery, and other names may also be included – such as the senator from the key state Arizona, Mark Kelly, the billionaire governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, or the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, from the most rural wing of the representative Democratic Party – but these are the ones who have made the most noise to complement Harris’s profile and thus attract centrist and moderate conservative voters.
The vice president, barring any surprises, will be nominated before next August 7 in a virtual vote that has been brought forward two weeks before the national convention in Chicago to avoid running out of ballots in Ohio, one of the first states to vote by mail. Before that date, which could be next week, he will also announce his candidate for vice president and clear up the doubts of voters who will already have two completed ballots to consider for their vote on November 5.
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