WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is set to begin a battleground tour next week with her yet-to-be-named running mate, with stops in seven key states stretching from Pennsylvania to Nevada, her campaign said Tuesday.
The planned tour is the latest sign of the breakneck pace at which Harris has transformed from President Joe Biden’s running mate to a likely Democratic nominee, ready to identify her No. 2 and take on Republican Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
Harris said Tuesday she had not yet made a decision on who she would choose.
The successful candidates are demonstrating a long-standing tradition: the summer auditions in which vice presidential candidates walk a tightrope between open self-promotion and loyal defense of the potential boss.
To that end, Democrat Josh Shapiro told cheering voters in suburban Philadelphia this week that Harris belongs in the White House, before reminding them of his accomplishments as governor of Pennsylvania, a key swing state. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear similarly told Georgia voters that Harris has the makings of a “great president,” before pointing to the election he won as a Democrat in Republican territory.
Harris’ campaign has considered about a dozen potential vice presidential candidates, with Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly among the frontrunners, according to people familiar with the matter.
The campaign said Harris and her running mate will make stops next week in Philadelphia, western Wisconsin, Detroit, Raleigh, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, Harris’ advisers, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, have combed through reams of documents submitted by potential running mates, while the candidate herself is having personal conversations with finalists, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details that have not been made public.
Harris is looking for someone with leadership experience who can also serve as a governing partner, according to another person familiar with the matter. The idea of a so-called short list hasn’t stopped candidates from the national Democratic bench from finding themselves in the spotlight.
“I’m not going to talk about the interactions I’ve had with the campaign,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said recently on MSNBC. But he added, “Let’s just say I’m aware that the selection process is pretty thorough.” Then he listed his accomplishments, noting that he was the only Midwestern governor to raise his state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Harris would be the first woman, the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to become president. Many Democrats believe she should balance her ticket both demographically and politically.
The Democrats’ VP slate has notable differences
Shapiro, 51, is one of the most popular governors in the United States, having won his 2022 election by defeating a Trump-backed Republican. He is a staunch supporter of abortion rights who has won three statewide races in Pennsylvania. His speaking style has earned him comparisons to that of former President Barack Obama. But he has been criticized by the left for his support for Israel’s war against Hamas, a private school voucher program and natural gas infrastructure.
His allies argue that it would help Harris win Pennsylvania, complicating or even blocking Trump’s path to an Electoral College majority.
Like all the candidates, Shapiro has sidestepped questions about the selection process and stressed that Harris should not be pressured. But he has repeatedly mentioned that he has known her for nearly two decades.
Beshear is standing out in a state that is overwhelmingly Republican. During his weekend in Georgia, he talked about winning votes in “tough counties” but stressed his liberal bona fides: “I am a proud pro-union governor. I am a proud pro-choice governor. I am a proud public education governor. I am a proud pro-diversity governor.”
Among the Democratic candidates, the one closest in age to J.D. Vance is the one who openly mocks Trump’s stand-in, who presents himself as a son of Appalachia. “I mean, there’s a county that J.D. Vance says he’s from in Kentucky — and I won it by 22 points last November,” he said.
Beshear and Shapiro both served as state attorneys general, like Harris, before becoming governors. But their tenures didn’t overlap much with Harris’s in California. She worked more closely with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper when he was attorney general, but Cooper said Monday that he chose not to be considered for vice president.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, 60, is a favorite of some progressives. He has an unusual national political resume: He was an Army noncommissioned officer, a public school teacher and a state championship high school football coach before entering politics. Before being elected governor, he was one of the last white Democrats in Congress to represent a largely rural, small-town House district — a marked difference from Harris, the Californian from the San Francisco Bay Area.
“She’s going to make the best choice she can,” Walz said on CNN Sunday, a day after Trump held a mass rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota. “One way or another, she’s going to win in November, and that’s going to benefit everybody,” Walz said, including “a lot of the people who were in St. Cloud with the former president.”
Kelly, 60, is the only major congressional candidate. He has an impressive military resume and astronaut experience. He has strong Latino support locally and deep relationships with Arizona officials along the U.S.-Mexico border. That balance could give him credibility on immigration policy as Republicans view the high number of migrants crossing the border as a national crisis.
But Kelly has had to shore up his credentials with labor unions, a key faction of the Democratic Party. He has faced criticism from union leaders because he was one of the few Democrats who did not support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize. He said at the time that he supported those goals but had reservations. After pressure this month, he said today that he would vote for the bill if it came to a vote.
Everyone has an opinion
As Harris considers his choices, everyone seems to have an opinion.
Steven Benjamin, the White House director of public engagement, laughed as he told reporters aboard Air Force One Monday that his office had received thousands of referrals from across the country.
Donna Brazile, who ran Democrat Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and was instrumental in pushing Biden to pick Harris in 2020, said the selection process involves “a lot of noise” that downplays the complexity of the decision.
“The most important step is what the lawyers are going to do to you,” she said, laughing and emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. “It’s worse than a dental hygiene checkup.”[…]Before they get to adequacy and other factors, before it gets to politicians like me, they do a forensic examination of your life.”
Barrow reported from Cumming, Georgia. Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington; Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Bruce Schreiner in Frankfort, Kentucky; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; and Colleen Long aboard Air Force One contributed.
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