Who will Harris choose for VP? Whitmer, Shapiro, Kelly on potential shortlist

Washington Correspondent

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President Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he was withdrawing from his 2024 reelection race and backing Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor was immediately followed by speculation about who Harris, in turn, might pick as her running mate.

Vice presidential picks are based on a calculation of who brings the special mix of policy positions, personal history and electoral impact to the slot: Are they serving in a pivotal swing state? Do their ideologies align with the candidate at the top of the ticket? Does their personal story resonate with a key group of voters? Have they or would they make history in some way?

Alexis Coe, a presidential historian, author and New America senior fellow, said that a “vice president needs to bring something to the ticket, a vice president is not just a prop in the background.” She expects Harris to pick a running mate who isn’t also from California, has manageable ambitions and is a figure who “makes people comfortable” — especially moderate swing voters. Based on those priorities, Coe anticipates a “somewhat inoffensive White man” who will likely have “a conspicuous family, or at least two children.”

“You want a vice president who is great at ticking off boxes on a to-do list, who is an avuncular, sagacious figure,” Coe told The 19th.

The law firm of former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served in the Obama administration, is vetting the potential candidates on Harris’ list, the news agency Reuters reported on Monday.

Here are some of the candidates who might be on the Harris campaign’s list:

Andy Beshear

Before Andy Beshear was Kentucky’s governor, he was an attorney general who repeatedly sued Republican then-Gov. Matt Bevin over alleged abuses of power — winning some, losing others — before going on to beat him by less than half a percentage point in 2019.

Beshear had just been sworn in to lead the Southern state, whose eastern region is in Appalachia, when COVID-19 hit the country. He made a controversy-stirring decision to direct state troopers to record the license plates numbers of churchgoers who violated the state’s stay-at-home order to attend Easter Sunday services. Several months into the pandemic, he pledged to address the racial disparities it exposed by promising to provide free health care to all Black Kentuckians. Other work on issues related to race was an executive order that restored voting rights to more than 180,000 people convicted of felonies in Kentucky — Beshear said they were disproportionately African American and had been convicted of nonviolent offenses.

Beshear, 46, is the son of former Gov. Steve Beshear, another Democrat, who won in 2007 and 2011 as the state took a rightward turn. Andy Beshear was reelected to his own second gubernatorial term in 2023 by about five points; Biden lost Kentucky in 2020 by more than 25 points. His campaign was heavily focused on restoring abortion rights in a state where a full ban went into effect after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

After Biden dropped out, Beshear posted a statement on X: “While his decision today could not have been easy, it is in the best interest of our country, and our party. I want to thank him for his leadership, kindness and for a successful presidency that got big, important things done.” He announced his endorsement of Harris in a television interview Monday morning.

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg is a former Naval officer and 2020 Democratic White House contender who is serving as Biden’s transportation secretary. He was a favorite target of conservatives when he took parental leave following the births of his twins with his husband, Chasten Buttigieg. He is the first out gay man to be Cabinet secretary.

Buttigieg, 42, began working on Democratic political campaigns shortly after graduating from college, including John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid and former Rep. Joe Donnelly of Indiana’s election to the U.S. House. He then went to graduate school at University of Oxford in England and joined the global consultancy McKinsey & Company, where his projects included advising Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Postal Service.

Buttigieg was the Democratic nominee for state treasurer in 2010 but lost to the Republican candidate. The next year, he ran for mayor in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, defeating a Republican as well as a Libertarian to become, at 29 years old, the second-youngest mayor in the city’s history. He deployed to Afghanistan for seven months during his first mayoral term. While he was campaigning for reelection, Buttigieg came out as gay and expressed support for LGBTQ+ rights amid controversy over an anti-marriage equality bill passed by Republican lawmakers and signed by then Gov. Mike Pence, who would go on to be Trump’s vice president.

Buttigieg explored a bid to chair the Democratic National Committee before withdrawing from consideration. As his second mayoral term drew to a close, Buttigieg launched a Democratic primary campaign in the 2020 White House race. He styled himself as a pragmatic progressive who knew how to appeal to voters in a conservative Midwestern state. He withdrew after the fourth nominating contest, held in South Carolina, and endorsed Biden. Buttigieg has been a vehement defender of Biden and his economic policies, making his case even on Fox News.

Roy Cooper

Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina is wrapping up a second term and cannot run again in the political swing state due to term limits.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Biden confidante, co-chair of his presidential campaign and longtime ally who helped him win the Democratic nomination in 2020 by acting as a prominent supporter in his pivotal home state of South Carolina, recently told Politico that Cooper was in “next crop” of rising Democratic leaders who could end up in the White House.

Cooper, 67, served in the North Carolina legislature for more than a decade, rising to be majority leader in the state Senate, before being elected as attorney general four times, the last time without a Republican opponent. In 2016, he challenged Republican then-Gov. Pat McCrory. Central to his campaign was Cooper’s criticism of McCrory’s recent signing of an anti-LGBTQ+ bathroom bill, which Cooper said was unconstitutional because it discriminated against trans people. Cooper beat McCrory by about 10,000 votes, while Democrat Hillary Clinton lost to Trump by more than three points in the state. Cooper won his 2019 reelection race by 4.5 percentage points. In 2020, Biden still lost North Carolina to Trump, but by less than two percentage points. Democrats aim to flip the state in 2024.

On Sunday, Cooper posted a statement on X that said Biden had “cemented his place among our nation’s finest Presidents” by passing “transformative legislation” and protecting democracy. Shortly after, in a separate post, he wrote: “Kamala Harris should be the next President … I look forward to campaigning for her as we work to win NC up and down the ticket.”

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban is a billionaire investor and one of the “sharks” on “Shark Tank,” a television reality show in which would-be entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to industry leaders. He is the former majority owner and current minority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. He co-owns the production company 2929 Entertainment; invests in cryptocurrency; and in 2022 founded the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, which aims to lower generic drug prices for U.S. consumers.

Cuban, 65, has become increasingly active in Democratic politics since 2016, when he campaigned heavily for Clinton in his home state of Pennsylvania, which she went on to narrowly lose to Trump that year. Though a forceful critic of Trump during that campaign, Cuban continued to appear on conservative television programs and said he would consider running as an independent in 2020. Instead, he endorsed Biden early on and encouraged him to make lowering prescription drug costs central to his reelection campaign.

Cuban continued to support Biden after his faltering debate performance in June. After Biden withdrew, Cuban was one of the earliest business leaders to weigh in, writing on X: “Father time is undefeated.” As of late Monday, Cuban had not weighed in on Harris’ elevation to the top of the ticket.

Mark Kelly

Sen. Mark Kelly from Arizona is a former U.S. Navy captain and astronaut who in 2020 flipped the seat in a special election following the death of longtime Republican Sen. John McCain, marking the first time the state had two Democratic senators since the 1950s. He won reelection in the 2022 midterms by nearly five points in a swing state that often has razor-thin margins in statewide elections.

Kelly’s wife, Gabby Giffords, is a former member of the House of Representatives. First elected in 2006, she had just begun her third two-year term when she was shot in the head during a constituent event in Tucson. She briefly returned to Congress before resigning to focus on her rehabilitation. Both she and Kelly have become outspoken advocates for stronger gun control measures.

Kelly, 60, and Giffords recently wrote in People magazine about how the assassination attempt disrupted the fertility treatments they were undergoing. They said that Republicans are pushing policies, including in the Senate, that will imperil Americans’ rights and endanger access to in vitro fertilization and other reproductive health care.

“Make no mistake: The freedom to start a family with IVF is under threat,” they wrote. “Our dream of having a child together was taken away by a gunman. The dreams of Americans to have a child together could be taken away by politicians.”

Kelly did not call on Biden to drop out of the race. But, soon after Biden withdrew, Kelly endorsed Harris, writing on X, “I couldn’t be more confident that Vice President @KamalaHarris is the right person to defeat Donald Trump and lead our country into the future … Gabby and I will do everything we can to elect her President of the United States.”

Wes Moore

Wes Moore is Maryland’s first Black governor. Though he for years expressed interest in potentially running for office, his 2022 gubernatorial campaign was the first time he entered the political fray himself.

Moore, 45, previously worked in politics in between a series of business ventures, book writing and filmmaking. He was a White House fellow to Republican then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in support of presidential nominee Barack Obama and served on the 2020 transition team of now-Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott. During Moore’s gubernatorial bid, Biden campaigned alongside him and he was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, with whom he has collaborated.

Moore was a Rhodes Scholar and an Army intelligence officer. He has said Democrats need to reclaim patriotism. Moore has cited as political role models Govs. Jared Polis of Colorado and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, both center-left politicians in battleground states.

Moore has described his preferred approach to policing as “maximum accountability and appropriate intensity.” He criticized previous Republican Gov. Larry Hogan for not doing enough to address the impacts of climate change. He supports increased restrictions on guns and has appeared at Moms Demand Action rallies. On reproductive rights, Moore supports amending the Maryland Constitution to enshrine abortion access; signed an early executive order releasing funding for abortion health care providers; and joined the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, an interstate gubernatorial taskforce of governors led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

JB Pritzker

JB Pritzker is a billionaire venture capitalist, investor and scion of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain and has served as the governor of Illinois since 2019.

Before running for office, Pritzker was active in Democratic politics as a donor and staffer. He worked for then-U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos of California and then-Sens. Terry Sanford of North Carolina and Alan Dixon of Illinois. As a law student in the 1990s, he founded Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century, an organization that aimed to bring young voters into the Democratic Party. He was a co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential primary campaign and backed Barack Obama in the general election. He was a delegate at the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Conventions.

Pritzker, 59, made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House in the late 1980s before running for governor in 2018 and again in 2022.

One of Pritzker’s early moves as governor was signing a bill that repealed a law from the 1970s that penalized doctors for performing “unnecessary” abortions. The newly enacted law also protected the “fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about one’s own reproductive health.” He has said Illinois will be a refuge for those in states with abortion bans. He also early on signed a law to protect trans students. Last year, Pritzker signed a law that bans assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Illinois is not a swing state, though, and reliably backs Democratic presidential candidates. The state’s largest city, Chicago, is hosting the party convention this year.
Pritzker supported Biden even as others called on him to step aside. Once he did, Pritzker praised Biden’s “storied political career culminating in one of the most accomplished and effective presidencies of our lifetime.” The next day, he spoke to Harris and issued a statement saying she “represents our Party’s best chance to defeat Donald Trump in November, and I will work my heart out to help her do that.”

Josh Shapiro

Josh Shapiro was elected governor of Pennsylvania in the 2022 midterms, winning by 15 points in a state that long favored Democrats in statewide races but where Republican Trump’s surprise win in 2016 sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party.

Shapiro, now 51, previously served as the state’s attorney general and a state legislator, as well as a commissioner of Montgomery County, the state’s third largest county.

Reproductive rights were central to Shapiro’s gubernatorial bid. He in 2023 ended decades of state funding for an anti-abortion program. He joined other Democratic governors to urge the Supreme Court to preserve access to medication abortion. Several months into his gubernatorial tenure, his administration launched a dashboard to help Pennsylvanians access reproductive health care.

In the 2020 presidential election, Shapiro was one of 20 people whom the state party chose to vote for Biden and Harris in the electoral college after Democrats wrested the state back from Trump. He did not call for Biden to drop out and quickly endorsed Harris, writing on X: “The contrast in this race could not be clearer and the road to victory in November runs right through Pennsylvania — where this collective work began. I will do everything I can to help elect @KamalaHarris as the 47th President of the United States.”

NBC News reported on Monday that Shapiro neither denied participating in discussions about potentially serving as Harris’ running mate nor said he would decline such an offer.

Tim Walz

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota is a former high school teacher, Army officer and member of the U.S. House. He was elected as the state’s top executive in 2018 and again in 2022.

Walz had been on the job for about a year when COVID-19 hit the country. Then, in May 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by kneeling on his neck. Widespread protests followed Floyd’s murder, first in Minneapolis, then nationwide. His dying words — “I can’t breathe!” — were invoked as a movement slogan. Walz quickly denounced Chauvin’s actions, saying the day after the murder: “The lack of humanity in this disturbing video is sickening. We will get answers and seek justice.” Walz’s initial response to the protests were criticized by Republicans and he admitted some shortcomings. He then called on the state legislature to reconvene to pass police accountability legislation. When it failed, a second session was held. The legislature passed a law that had a partial ban on police using chokeholds; ended a training program that had been criticized for potentially encouraging aggressive behavior; and training on how officers should deal with those in a mental health crisis. Walz quickly signed it into law.

Walz, 60, is a strong supporter of abortion rights; called to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” related to LGBTQ+ people serving in the military in a speech delivered several years prior to its repeal; and has advocated to legalize recreational marijuana. Minnesota last supported a Republican presidential candidate in 1972, when the state backed Richard Nixon for a second term. Even still, it was one of the states Democrats were worried about potentially losing this year, given polling after the first presidential debate before Biden dropped out of the race.
Walz posted on X Monday morning that Harris had called him and she had his “full support.”

Gretchen Whitmer

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer leads a swing state that is critical to Democrats’ chances of winning the White House, along with maintaining control of the Senate.

Whitmer’s 2018 gubernatorial bid focused on improving what she called the state’s “fundamentals” like water, schools and roads. She won by nearly 10 points just two years after Donald Trump carried the state by less than a point. Her candidacies and governorship has been defined by her oft-used slogan: “Fix the damn roads!” A title on a recent press release? “Governor Whitmer Continues to Fix the Damn Roads with Projects Starting This Week in Eight Counties.” Whitmer has also been a forceful defender of abortion rights, making it a pillar of her 2022 reelection campaign and encouraging the party to keep the issue front-and-center. She led the charge to repeal a 1931 abortion ban in the state.

Whitmer, 52, played a key role in 2020 helping Biden wrest Michigan back from Republicans as one of his national campaign co-chairs — a role she reprised in 2023 as he prepared to run for reelection. Whitmer said Monday after Biden’s withdrawal that she was “fired up to endorse Kamala Harris for president of the United States”  and that she would also serve as co-chair of her campaign. Shortly after, when asked by a local reporter if she was “prepared to take the vice presidency if it’s offered,” she said: “I’m not planning to go anywhere. … I’m not leaving Michigan.”

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