The candidates who have been in vetting interviews with the Harris team offer unique pluses and minuses to the Democratic Party ahead of the election.
By Adam Edelman, Julia Jester and Maura Barrett
The six people who have met with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign as she seeks her own No. 2 includes three northern governors, another one from a ruby-red conservative state, a border-state senator, and a Cabinet secretary with a talent for communication.
Whom Harris will select remains an open question — though we’ll know the answer by Tuesday, when she is set to appear with her running mate for the first time during a battleground-state tour that begins in Philadelphia. And each finalist offers the newly minted Democratic Party leader a particular way to balance the ticket.
NBC News has reported that Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are under strong consideration by Harris and her team. Here’s how each could uniquely help the Democratic ticket — plus the potential drawbacks already getting
attention.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear
Unlike Shapiro and Kelly, Beshear, who represents the red state of Kentucky, wouldn’t offer a boost in one specific swing state.
But as a Democrat who won re-election last year in a state that Trump carried by 26 percentage points in 2020, Beshear, 46, has proven electoral appeal that clearly transcends party lines.
That appeal could help boost the Democratic ticket with working-class, independent and even some Republican voters in battleground states across the U.S. Already, Beshear has hit the trail for Harris in Georgia, and he could be a boon in another Southern swing state, North Carolina. He is also seen as a potential counterbalance to GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance, the Ohio senator who has made his ties to Appalachia a central part of his political identity.
Part of the approach during his 2023 re-election campaign was leaning into his support for abortion rights (in a state where the procedure is almost entirely banned). Harris has made reproductive rights a central part of her messaging. But some reproductive rights advocates have questioned whether his positions would go far enough at the national level and whether he went far enough in his state-level advocacy.
On the other hand, Beshear’s political star rose in part due to his support for teachers’ pensions — a contrast to the occasional sparring that has taken place between Shapiro and teachers unions. Kentucky educators even took credit for Beshear’s most recent victory.
Meanwhile, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said Beshear was the top name for his members. “I’m a huge Andy Beshear fan,” he told CNN this week. “He’s been there with us every step of the way.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
At 42, Buttigieg is the youngest of the bunch. But his acumen as a communicator for the party has been praised widely for years, especially since he emerged as a stronger-than-expected candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Buttigieg has served as an apt messenger for and defender of the Biden administration, including on Fox News and other outlets where some Democrats choose not to go. He’s earned praise for continuing in that role as a surrogate for the nascent Harris campaign, talking up her accomplishments and slamming Donald Trump and Vance.
Between the 2020 campaign and a Cabinet confirmation, he’s been through more and longer national vetting than his competition. But his experience in electoral politics is thinner in some ways, despite that presidential campaign.
Buttigieg has never won statewide office, having served as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, before joining the Biden administration. He also risks being made the focal point of a wave of recent transportation crises in the country, including flight delays and a 2023 train derailment in Ohio. And he would tie the Democratic ticket even more firmly to the current administration and President Joe Biden, who has been unpopular for much of his term.
Buttigieg is from a working-class corner of Indiana and recently moved to the battleground of Michigan, where his husband’s family is from. It’s not clear if he would reinforce a key voting bloc or geographic area, though he did run well among Democrats in rural Iowa when he was campaigning for president in 2020.
US Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona
Kelly, 60, could help shore up Democratic support in another key battleground state — Arizona — where Biden won in 2020 by fewer than 11,000 votes.
He has won races in the state twice in the last four years (a 2020 special election and a full six-year term in 2022), demonstrating he offers a unique brand for the party that can help attract more independent voters — as he’s done in Arizona.
Central to that success has been his positioning as a hawk on the U.S.-Mexico border and on immigration — two issues that have been major vulnerabilities for most Democrats, including Biden and Harris. Some think he could effectively help shield Harris from that liability.
In addition, his biography (a former U.S. Navy combat pilot and a former NASA astronaut) as well as his spouse (former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who after nearly being killed in a 2011 mass shooting has emerged as a vaunted hero of gun safety groups) could bring star power that other contenders might not offer.
But some Democrats are nervous about the idea of his leaving the Senate, fearing a Republican would win a special election in Arizona to finish his current term — and jeopardize control of the chamber. If Kelly became the vice president, Arizona’s Democratic governor would appoint a Democratic successor, but a special election would be called for 2026 to finish out the final years of his term.
The UAW’s Fain has also noted that Kelly isn’t labor’s favorite candidate, having not come out early in support of a union-favored piece of legislation, the PRO Act. Kelly recently said he would support the bill.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker
The appeal surrounding Pritzker, a 59-year-old two-term governor and a former businessman and venture capitalist, centers on a combination of business experience and policy wins.
Top executives in and around Chicago penned a letter to Harris this week encouraging her to pick him, citing his experience creating jobs and working across party lines. And as a billionaire who has self-financed his campaigns in the past, he is well-positioned to bring a lot of cash into a presidential campaign.
Pritzker — who as governor has signed a host of progressive initiatives into law, including a ban on assault weapons, ghost guns and switches, and an increase in the minimum wage — has also led on the issue of reproductive freedom: His Think Big America political advocacy group has helped boost efforts to place and pass proposed constitutional amendments that would enshrine abortion rights in various states.
Illinois, however, is a solidly blue state, and Pritzker’s modest footprint in the media hasn’t caught fire the way some other VP contenders have in recent days. It’s not clear if his Midwestern roots would give him a leg up in helping win key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro
As the popular governor of a critical swing state, Shapiro, his boosters say, presents one of the clearest cases for being selected as Harris’ running mate: that he can help deliver a crucial battleground.
Shapiro, 51, won his 2022 gubernatorial election in a landslide (in a state that Biden had won just two years earlier by 0.2 percentage points), while recent polling shows his statewide approval rating at 57%, including approval from 42% of Republicans in Pennsylvania.
Proponents of the Pennsylvania governor also note a major Democratic Party donor recently called Shapiro “an Obama-level political talent” who has “a brand in Pennsylvania that’s worth it,” while others point to his accomplishments as the state attorney general, notably taking on Trump.
Even many Republicans view Shapiro as Harris’ strongest option, seeing him as an effective campaigner and messenger who has not totally alienated Pennsylvania Republicans and who could broaden Harris’ appeal with independent voters and traditional Democrats who’ve drifted away from the party.
But there are risks — especially when it comes to whether some voters on the left would embrace Shapiro, who has broken with Democrats on certain big issues. Shapiro has been the subject of the most organized campaigning against a potential VP pick from the left.
He has, for example, backed school vouchers (and has spoken in support of school choice on Fox News). Others have raised serious questions over his handling of sexual harassment claims against a legislative aide in his administration.
Most prominently, Shapiro, an observant Jew who has sharply condemned the rise of antisemitism, including at some pro-Palestinian protests, has faced scrutiny over his record on issues related to Israel.
Shapiro has been keeping a low profile through the vetting process . During a campaign bus riding through western Pennsylvania in late October 2022, days before being elected governor, Shapiro told CNN that he was eager for people to know about his connection to Judaism.
“That is what motivates me. It really is. I think if you want to be someone’s governor, they’ve got to know who you are as a person, what motivates you,” Shapiro told CNN. “That’s why I always talk about it. I talk about my faith because I want people to know what calls me to service.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
Few vice presidential contenders have raised their national profile more sharply during the speedy vetting process than Walz, who has utilized a media blitz to quickly and effectively showcase his plainspoken style that has helped make him a popular two-term Midwestern governor.
Allies of the 60-year-old Walz have hammered how his background representing rural communities is much needed in the party. Simultaneously, he’s built up a record of progressive policy accomplishments — a one-two punch they argue would translate to support across the critical nearby “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
He’d also bring a long list of Capitol Hill relationships he built during his 12 years in Congress — the most of any other reported finalist, his allies note — that fit the bill in Harris’ desire to find a “governing partner.”
Despite Walz’s headline-grabbing media blitz, it remains unclear how he specifically bolsters the ticket in ways other contenders might not.
Democrats don’t need help carrying Minnesota (a state that hasn’t gone red in a presidential race since 1972) — and if they do, they’ve likely got bigger problems.
Meanwhile, critics have reintroduced key questions about Walz’s rise and record. Among them are the concerns over a delay in the National Guard being called in as protests engulfed Minneapolis (and eventually cities across the nation) following the murder of George Floyd by city police officers in May 2020. The biggest pandemic fraud case in the U.S. also happened under Walz’s watch
NBC news
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