A governor from the rust belt, an LGBTQ person, or a former astronaut?
After Joe Biden's withdrawal, most indications suggest that Kamala Harris will become the Democratic presidential candidate. Her choice of vice presidential candidate is perhaps the most crucial of her career.
I assume she's looking for someone who can attract voters in the Midwest, says Chris Galdieri, professor of political science at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.
President Biden had barely announced that he would not run for re-election before the speculations began. His support for Harris does not automatically mean that the delegates Biden won during the primary election will vote for her at the party convention on August 19-22. But she has the support of several heavyweights, and much suggests that former prosecutor Harris will become the Democratic presidential candidate.
The question is who will be her running mate?
Battle for workers
It's often said that a vice presidential candidate should bring something to the ticket, such as a minority group, expertise, or a geographic area.
The 2024 election campaign has increasingly come to revolve around a handful of so-called swing states, places where it's evenly balanced between Democratic and Republican majorities. Several of them – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio – are located in the industrialized so-called rust belt. Many white workers live there, a group that has historically voted Democratic but has swung towards Donald Trump's Republicans in recent years.
The rust belt is important. Pennsylvania's governor Josh Shapiro is popular and can help Harris with voters there, says Galdieri.
81-year-old Biden threw in the towel after warnings that his and the party's support had plummeted in these swing states, following the president's weak debate performance in June. Add to that Trump's appointment of Ohio Senator JD Vance as vice presidential candidate. Yale-educated Vance is known for his autobiographical book "Hillbilly Elegy" about his tough working-class upbringing in Kentucky and Ohio.
A governor?
Josh Shapiro is on the lists of potential vice presidential candidates that are now circulating. Other hot names are governors Andy Beshear from Kentucky, Roy Cooper from North Carolina, Gavin Newsom from Harris' home state of California, Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, and billionaire JB Pritzker from Illinois.
Another possible companion is openly gay Transportation Minister and former mayor Pete Buttigieg, who comes from Indiana in the Midwest.
Another much-talked-about name is Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and senator from the swing state of Arizona. He is fighting, among other things, for stricter gun laws after a highly publicized assassination attempt on his wife, then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, in 2011.
59-year-old Kamala Harris has been Joe Biden's vice president since January 2021. The two have a close working relationship, and Biden supports Harris as the Democrats' next presidential candidate.
Harris' father is from Jamaica, and her mother is from India, but she was born in Oakland, northern California. After living in Canada and studying at Howard University in Washington DC, she returned to her home state to work as a lawyer and prosecutor.
In 2011, she was appointed Attorney General of California, a post she held until she was elected to the US Senate in 2016. Then, she became the second black woman to be elected to the chamber.
Harris ran her own presidential campaign in 2019 before dropping out and backing Joe Biden.
She is married to lawyer Doug Emhoff since 2014. Has no children of her own, but has said that Emhoff's children from a previous marriage call her "Momala". Enjoys cooking and usually gets on the cross-trainer early in the morning.
