Who will be Kamala Harris’ running mate? | La Presse

(New York) Hoping to replace Joe Biden at the head of the Democratic ticket, Kamala Harris has already tasked Eric Holder, former attorney general of the United States under Barack Obama, with checking the backgrounds of her potential running mates. But it will be up to her to choose, among the candidates who successfully complete this step, the one who could be best suited to help her make history as president of the United States.

The exhaustive list includes nearly ten names, including those of governors Gavin Newsom (California), Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan) and Wes Moore (Maryland), as well as that of the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. However, despite their respective qualities, the latter are not among the favorites, unlike the next four candidates.

Josh Shapiro

The governor of Pennsylvania would be a more than logical choice. A political moderate and well-liked by many Republicans – he garnered 42% approval ratings from them in a recent poll – the 51-year-old is leading a state where the 2024 presidential election could be decided.

Pennsylvania has 19 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Before he withdrew, Joe Biden and his camp acknowledged the near impossibility of reaching the magic number without the Keystone State. Kamala Harris and her advisers will likely make the same calculation.

Elected to his post in 2022 after serving as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Shapiro gained national attention in June 2023. After a tanker fire caused a section of Philadelphia’s I-95 to collapse, he orchestrated its reopening in two weeks. Experts had predicted that the operation, vital to the regional economy, would take months.

He would be the second Jewish running mate in American history, after Joe Lieberman, who ran for vice president in 2000.

Mark Kelly

The Arizona senator would give the Democratic ticket what J.D. Vance brings to the Republican ticket: a candidate with military experience, which is no small feat in the United States. But Mark Kelly’s experience eclipses that of the Ohio senator, who served as a military correspondent in the Marine Corps. Twice deployed to the aircraft carrier USS Midwaythe 60-year-old senator flew 39 missions as a combat pilot during Operation Desert Storm.

He is also a NASA astronaut. Between 1996 and 2011, he completed two missions as pilot and two missions as commander aboard the American space shuttle.

In 2020, he became the first Democrat since 1962 to win the Senate seat held by John McCain before his death. A political moderate, he could attract the many independents in Arizona, a key state in the 2024 presidential election, to the Democratic ticket and respond to Republican attacks on issues surrounding the southern border.

His wife would also be an asset. Former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, a shooting survivor, is a noted gun control activist.

Roy Cooper

The governor of North Carolina is part of an endangered species: a Democrat who manages to get elected by all the voters in a Southern state. Until last November, he shared that distinction with John Bel Edwards, his counterpart from Louisiana, who was barred from seeking a third term.

Roy Cooper, 67, is finishing his second and final term as North Carolina’s president. He wouldn’t be in the running mate spotlight today for Kamala Harris if Democrats weren’t hoping to take his state, which Donald Trump won by a slim 1.34 percentage point margin in 2020, from Republicans. It’s a state whose big corporations and universities are helping to attract newcomers who are transforming the electorate.

With his Southern accent, Roy Cooper would also represent a contrast to a certain elitism associated with politicians from the American coastal states, particularly New York and California. One of his feats of arms: expanding health coverage offered to the less fortunate under Obamacare, something most of the governors of the states in his region have refused to do.

Andy Beshear

The Kentucky governor might not help Kamala Harris win her state, unlike Shapiro, Kelly and Cooper. But that’s also one reason he might be chosen as a running mate.

The 46-year-old Democrat managed to get himself elected twice to the governorship of one of the reddest states in his country. The son of a popular former governor, he is clearly capable of defending his party’s values ​​without alienating moderate voters and even some conservatives.

He owes his last re-election in particular to his outspoken criticism of his Republican rival’s ultraconservative positions on abortion. He also benefited greatly from a viral ad in which a young woman recalled having to have an abortion at age 12 after being raped by her stepfather, a choice that the Republican candidate wanted to deprive women in his state of.

The Kentucky governor also appears ready to take on J.D. Vance, who harshly criticized the culture of white people from eastern Kentucky in his book Hillbilly Elegy“He calls us lazy, which makes me angry, but especially our fellow citizens in eastern Kentuckians,” he said on CNN Monday.

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