Who will be Kamala’s running mate?
And your other questions, answered.
Well, that was fast. It took exactly 32 hours and 1 minute after President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid for Vice President Kamala Harris to clinch the Democratic nomination.
According to an Associated Press count, more than 2,600 Democratic delegates have pledged their support to Harris, well surpassing the 1,976 she needs to win the party’s nod. “When I announced my campaign for president, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination,” Harris said in a Monday night statement. “Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top.”
Harris has already begun previewing her campaign message against Trump, noting in a Monday appearance at her campaign headquarters that when she was a prosecutor, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds,” including “predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So, hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type,” she added.
Meanwhile, Harris’ fundraising has continued to soar: her campaign raised $81 million in its first 24 hours, a new one-day record for a presidential campaign. As of this morning, the Harris bid has raised more than $100 million in total since its launch; according to the campaign, 62% of the 1.1 million donors who have contributed since Sunday had not previously given to the Biden campaign.
I know a lot of you have questions about what comes next — thank you so much to those of you who sent questions in using the WUTP live chat. It was great chatting with you! Now, let’s give some answers:
Laurie Ann Sperling: Pundits are suggesting Whitmer, Kelly, and others for Harris’ running mate. Who are the best VP candidates to do this?
A four-person shortlist has emerged pretty quickly in the hours since Harris locked up the nomination: Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA).
All four are white men hailing from red or purple states, an attempt to balance the ticket with Harris, a Black woman whose only pre-2020 campaign experience was in deep-blue California.
To quickly give some background on each of them: Beshear, 46, is the youngest on the list, while Cooper, 67, is the oldest. Beshear spent four years as Kentucky’s attorney general, and then the last five as the state’s governor, holding the same position his father Steve held before him. Cooper has been in politics since the 1980s, climbing the ranks from North Carolina state House to state Senate to state Senate majority leader, before spending 16 years as North Carolina AG and then the last eight as governor. (His term is set to end in January.)
Picking Beshear would double down on youth, while also making an Appalachian contrast with Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Beshear has been the one most openly campaigning for the role, appearing on cable news repeatedly in the last 24 hours to take on Vance. “I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that J.D. Vance ain’t from here,” he said on “Morning Joe” yesterday.
Cooper, meanwhile, would lend gravitas to the ticket — almost like Barack Obama choosing Biden in 2008, a relative political newcomer tapping a far more experienced hand. Cooper and Harris are also known to be close, having developed a relationship when they both served as state AGs at the same time. North Carolina is something of a reach state for Democrats this year, but if they really want to go for it, Cooper has been elected there statewide six times. It would still be a hard state for Harris to win, but adding Cooper to the ticket might at least force Republicans to expend resources there.
Then there’s Kelly, who probably has the most unique biography of the bunch, having served as a naval aviator during the Gulf War before becoming an astronaut and now a senator. He would be the first vice president to have traveled into space. He is also married to Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who was shot in 2011, which would make for a fascinating parallel with Trump after his assassination attempt this month.
Finally, Shapiro served six years as Pennsylvania attorney general before ascending to the governorship last year. He would be the first Jewish vice president — although his vocal support for Israel could cause some problems in the Democratic coalition, especially as progressives just finished celebrating the replacement of Biden with Harris, who is seen as more willing to criticize Israel than the president.
Personally, from an electoral perspective, I think Shapiro is the smartest pick. Statistically speaking, the home-state advantage of a vice presidential pick is often slim, but Shapiro is the only contender from a genuinely must-win state for Harris — and he boasts a 57% approval rating there, according to a New York Times/Siena poll. The same survey showed that 35% of Trump voters in Pennsylvania approve of Shapiro’s job performance, showing his crossover appeal. Even if Shapiro only boosts Harris’ chances in Pennsylvania slightly, it could be worth it, considering Democrats need to win Pennsylvania in a way they don’t need to win, say, Arizona or North Carolina. He is also a strong communicator — Harris and Shapiro would be a formidable duo making the “prosecutor(s) vs. felon” argument against Trump.
From a governing perspective, Cooper probably makes the most sense. Harris has relatively little statewide political experience (six years as AG and four years as a senator) and no real executive experience. Cooper would balance that, although it’s worth noting that he doesn’t have much foreign policy experience — and neither do any of the other three contenders, even though Harris’ only experience in that area is from her time as vice president. Let’s just say, though, that Harris happens to win the presidency twice: Cooper would be 75 years old in 2032, right about Biden’s age in 2016, which led to a very awkward pile-up and a lot of hurt feelings within the party. That’s getting ahead of ourselves, but just throwing that out there, since picking a vice president is all about ensuring a clean succession plan.
Ken Johnson: Are there any valid legal challenges to Harris’ candidacy/nomination at this point due to it being this late in the process?
There might be legal challenges, but I doubt they will be valid. Remember: Joe Biden wasn’t even officially the Democratic nominee yet, so it wouldn’t have been possible for his name to be on any ballots. The first state ballot access deadline for the major parties has not yet arrived, so on that score, Harris won’t face any issues.
The one area Republicans might try to cause problems are in Harris’ inheritance of the “Biden for President” campaign committee (and its attendant war chest), which now been renamed “Harris for President.” Sean Cooksey, the Republican chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), has been making noises about this issue, pointing to a provision that says if a candidate “is not a candidate in the general election, all contributions made for the general election shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated…or reattributed…as appropriate.”
The only issue with this line of argument is that Harris’ name has been on the campaign committee this whole time (as its candidate for vice president): see the FEC filing for Biden’s re-election. So there have actually been two general election candidates attached to the committee since the beginning, and she was one of them. In any event, the FEC is hopelessly deadlocked, with three Republican commissioners and three Democratic commissioners, so even if someone tried to bring a complaint to the commission (and someone probably will), the issue would probably split along party lines and nothing would happen.
Brent Burkholder: Do you think that Kamala will keep Biden’s top campaign manager and staff? She has to walk a fine line between showing independence and being loyal to Joe. However, bringing in her own staff would certainly be a step to showing she is running her own campaign and not just a “stand-in.”
Harris said yesterday that she will keep on Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, and campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon. And that announcement was made at Biden (now Harris) campaign HQ in Delaware, implying that the operation will continued to be located there, which is slightly funny considering the candidate no longer has any connection to the state.
The interesting thing to note about Chávez Rodriguez and O’Malley Dillon is that neither of them are really “Biden people” in the typical sense. O’Malley Dillon came to Bidenworld from Obama’s orbit, while Chávez Rodriguez actually came to Biden via Harris: she was Harris’ state director in the Senate and her traveling chief of staff during Harris’ 2020 primary campaign. So, keeping on Chávez Rodriguez is certainly a natural choice, since — if anything — she is even more connected to Harris than she was to Biden.
Whether more hardened Biden hands like Mike Donilon stay on (and, even if they retain their titles, whether they continue to wield influence on the campaign) will be a different story.
Harris is interesting in that she doesn’t really have a circle of longtime staffers to bring to the campaign in the way that Biden has Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, and others. As The Hill has reported, at each stage of her career, Harris has brought few aides from her last role to her new one, which some former staffers have attributed to her being a difficult boss. Her 2020 campaign was marked by staff turmoil, which could be why her vice presidential office was mostly staffed by outsiders (which led to its own issues, as her VP office then went through several rounds of turnover).
Instead, her closest advisers seem to be her family: her sister, Maya Harris, a political operative her chaired her 2020 campaign; her brother-in-law Tony West, the chief legal officer of Uber and a former official in the Obama Justice Department; and her husband Doug Emhoff.
This caused big issues in her 2020 campaign — as politicians relying on family always does — since it was unclear where Maya’s exact responsibilities started and stopped, and since she often went “unchallenged” because she was the candidate’s sister, according to the New York Times. We’ll see if history repeats itself; per Politico, Harris has indeed been relying on West (Maya’s husband) in recent days, as he has reportedly joined several campaign calls and been seen traveling with her.
Anyways, it does look like Harris will keep on the bulk of Biden’s staff — but if the polling against Trump doesn’t turn around soon, expect to see some pressure from Democrats for her to add new blood to the operation. Also, for the reasons I’ve noted, don’t necessarily expect the new blood to be people closely tied to Harris. Continuing the trend of her reaching to outside strategists rather than a set crew of loyalists throughout her career, in the early days of the campaign, it appears that Harris is reaching into the ranks of Obamaworld to upgrade her campaign staff.
Per Politico, Harris allies have approached Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, about a leading role on the campaign; according to Reuters, Obama’s close friend and former attorney general, Eric Holder, has been tapped to lead the vetting for Harris’ VP choice. Recall that Obama and Biden’s orbits have always had something of a frosty relationship, so it will be interesting if we see a new infusion of Obama talent into the campaign now that Biden has stepped aside. Speaking of…
Andrew Baquero: Why do you think Obama had no mention of Harris in his long response to Biden dropping out, especially when so many other party leaders immediately supported her?
I wouldn’t read too much into this. Obama likes to fashion himself as a neutral arbiter in the Democratic Party, believing he retains more credibility in the party if he doesn’t (publicly) wade into internecine battles while they’re still ongoing. It’s the same reason why he didn’t endorse Biden until he was the presumptive nominee in 2020; now that Harris is the presumptive nominee as well, I expect Obama’s endorsement will be forthcoming.
Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have yet to endorse Harris, something that is probably coming today or later this week now that she has presumptively won the nomination. Like Obama, their non-endorsements so far are more about them not wanting to put their thumbs on the scale, rather than any opposition to Harris.
Returning to Obama, I’d also expect there’s some level of Biden ego-maintenance going on there. The relationship between the former running mates is complicated, with Biden still harboring a lot of bitterness from Obama pushing him not to run in 2016. With resentment levels already running on a high the past few days (Biden reportedly believes Obama was behind a lot of the push for him to step down this time), Obama also probably wanted to keep his Biden statement about Biden, so his former veep saw that Obama was taking time to celebrate him before rushing off to coronate a successor.
Does that all sound a little petty and childish? Well, yeah, welcome to politics.
Karly: Is the virtual roll call still happening for the Ohio deadline? So is it a real possibility that the candidate will be set before the convention?
It appears that it is. Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Jaime Harrison signaled yesterday that the party will move forward with a virtual roll call, ratifying their nominee before the convention. An exact date has not been set yet, but the plan is to have the roll call done by August 7 at the latest. (The convention starts on August 19.)
This is all a bit silly, since Ohio has long since moved its ballot access deadline (it was originally going to be before August 19, causing issues with the Democratic convention, but has been pushed later). So this really seems like a face-saving move on the part of Harrison, who spent the last few weeks of the Biden-for-president campaign insisting that a virtual roll call still had to happen, ostensibly because of Ohio (but, since Ohio had already moved its deadline, seemingly because of fears that someone would challenge Biden on the convention floor). Now, the ostensible reason and the private reason to have a virtual roll call have been eliminated — but to cancel it now would be to admit that the private reason was the real reason, so on with the virtual roll call they go.
Bill Livingston: What does polling in the swing states show? Unfortunately, that’s more important than the national results I’ve seen.
The million-dollar question. (Or, to put it more accurately, the 10-billion-dollar question.) Unfortunately, there’s been a real dearth of swing-state polling this cycle, and even less conducted so far between Trump and Harris. But as soon as we have some reputable swing-state numbers, I’ll be sure to share them here.
That’s all we have time for this morning, but there were so many great questions in the chat that I’ll be featuring a few more of them throughout the week. Thanks so much for submitting questions — the live chat is still open if you have more.
More news to know
Axios: “Full of s**t”: Secret Service director grilled over Trump rally shooting
WaPo: RFK Jr. floated a job in a Trump White House as he weighed endorsing Trump
Roll Call: Senate panel takes step toward potential Menendez expulsion
CNN: Beyoncé gives Kamala Harris permission to use her song ‘Freedom’ for her presidential campaign
The day ahead
Biden: After several days of self-isolating in Delaware, the president will return to the White House this afternoon. Biden has yet to be seen on camera since he ended his bid for re-election.
Harris: The VP will hold her first full campaign event, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Senate: The upper chamber will hold a vote to confirm Colleen Duffy Kiko as a member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
House: The lower chamber is scheduled to vote on the Energy and Water Development appropriations package.
Supreme Court: The justices are out until October.
Before I go…
Here’s some levity from my X feed this morning:
Wishing President Carter all the best as he approaches 100.
Earlier today, read a long article by David Samuels, who has a particular view of Obama and Washington politics, post-presidency. It was originally in Tablet, their Arts and Letters section.
Have never been sure if he was for real or a Manchurian Candidate, still not certain, but the article shows Obama having far more resonance, than one might expect. Found it interesting, still not certain as to its accuracy, but definitely could be.
The questions were great and your answers were wonderful, thank you.
Have seen the most recent Quinnipiac and Harris polls, Harris needs to get to work, quick.