The Veepstakes (Pennsylvania’s Version)


Vice President Kamala Harris’s supersonic veep search is in its final stages, and she heads into the weekend with much to consider before she announces her choice.

There is the question of vibe, of whom she gets along with. Harris will also need to consider the future of her party, given that she herself is living proof of how a vice-presidential pick can be a future Democratic standard-bearer.

And then, of course, there is the electoral map.

Harris’s shortlist has narrowed to six names, with Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona seen as the leading contenders in a medley of white guys that also includes Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Only two men on that list represent swing states. And only one of those states is seen by Democrats as an absolute must-win.

So today, amid a whirl of speculation, we’re going to home in on just one guy — Shapiro — and the biggest, baddest swing state of them all: Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral votes. Shapiro, 51, became a Democratic darling when he won the 2022 governor’s race by nearly 15 percentage points, and he has since become the state’s most popular first-term governor since the early 1990s.

But the question of whether that means he can deliver Pennsylvania for the Democrats is a little more complicated.

Over the past 12 days (yes, it’s been only 12 days), Shapiro has rocketed to the top of some Democrats’ veep wish lists. He has been buoyed by his poll numbers (which got a boost in part by his quick fix of a collapsed bridge last year) and, perhaps, by his proximity to the New York and Washington media markets.

The speculation was evident at a ceremonial bill-signing that Shapiro attended on Friday morning at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, a historically Black school in the Philadelphia suburbs, where he bobbed his head to live drumming and waved away questions about his vice-presidential prospects.

“Really wish we had something about Cheyney, higher education or the budget,” he said dryly, although he later seized on the opportunity to describe former President Donald Trump as insecure, and to declare that Harris would “whup” him on a debate stage.

Shapiro’s allies describe him as an energetic campaigner and a deft attacker whose campaign for governor, which he based around themes like reproductive freedom and his work as the state’s attorney general, would make him a natural fit for Harris’s ticket.

“He has worked tirelessly to promote himself,” said J.J. Abbott, a Pennsylvania Democratic strategist who worked on an independent effort against State Senator Doug Mastriano, Shapiro’s Republican opponent in 2022. “He has a unique ability to add to the ticket because he has run these big campaigns very recently and his approval rating speaks to it.”

Shapiro has, however, rankled the state’s progressives by supporting a school voucher program that drew deep opposition from own party. He is an observant Jew who speaks of his faith often, and his outspoken support of Israel’s right to self-defense and his denunciation of college students’ protest of the war in Gaza have also drawn opposition from the left. That opposition could be a downside for a presidential campaign that is eager to unite the Democratic Party.

And even though he won races for attorney general in his swing state in 2016 and 2020, as well as the governor’s race, a presidential race is a whole different ballgame. Shapiro’s 2022 victory came over the election-denying Mastriano, who was largely abandoned by the national G.O.P. and who was vastly outspent by Shapiro.

“Whereas national Republicans left Mastriano for dead, they are 100 percent united behind Trump and will do whatever it takes to beat Kamala and whoever her running mate is,” said Eric Stern, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania.

It has been years since a vice-presidential candidate delivered a home state in a presidential race. To understand whether Shapiro can do that for Harris, it might be more instructive to look not at his 2022 governor’s race but at his 2020 attorney general’s race — a presidential year when Shapiro was on the ballot with Biden.

Biden narrowly won Pennsylvania that year, and with it, the presidential election, carrying 50 percent of the vote. Shapiro slightly outran him, carrying 51 percent of the vote.

Shapiro, who is from Montgomery County, north of Philadelphia, is seen as a powerhouse vote-getter in the Philly suburbs that make or break Pennsylvania elections.

But when I asked my colleague Christine Zhang, a data journalist, to compare how Shapiro and Biden each did across the state in 2020, she discovered something interesting: Shapiro got a slightly lower vote share than Biden did in Philadelphia and the key suburban counties nearby, but he outperformed Biden in western and rural parts of the state, which are typically more conservative. That might mean he could help Harris in parts of the state where Democrats typically lose.

“He has tremendous strength in parts of the state that Democrats don’t always do well with,” said Berwood Yost, the director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College.

Former Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, predicted that Shapiro could deliver Harris as many as 50,000 votes — but he cautioned that she might be able to carry the state without them, and could thus prioritize something else in her running mate.

Still, when I asked what he’d do if he were choosing, Rendell was clear.

“If I was advising Vice President Harris, I’d say, ‘Take Josh. Make sure you win Pennsylvania,’” Rendell said. “‘Lock it up.’”

I asked my colleague Jonathan Weisman to tell us a little bit about the other swing state veep contender, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Jonathan, take it away!

Arizona Democrats were in a pinch in 2019. Martha McSally, the nation’s first female combat pilot, had been appointed to fill the Senate seat of John McCain after his death, and the 2020 election would test the state’s battleground status.

To counter McSally’s powerful biography, Democrats turned to Mark Kelly, a relative newcomer to the state with an impressive résumé of his own — Navy pilot turned astronaut — and with the moral authority that came with nursing his grievously wounded wife, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, back to health after she had been shot in the head by a mass shooter in 2011.

Kelly may lack the oratorical skills or the aw-shucks approachability of others now on the shortlist to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, but even without a particularly long record in public office, he may be the most battle-tested.

His race against McSally pit a former Navy pilot against a former Air Force pilot in a state that was only just emerging as competitive for Democrats. Kelly marshaled the political organization assembled by his wife, and support from moderate Republicans, to beat McSally by just over two percentage points, or 78,806 votes. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Arizona that year by 0.3 points, or 10,457 votes.

Because Kelly’s 2020 run was a special election to complete McCain’s term, Kelly had to do it again in 2022, this time against a hard-charging Trump acolyte, the technology entrepreneur Blake Masters. Kelly won by nearly five points.

Arizona Republicans believe that, even after back-to-back victories, Kelly has not faced anything like the scrutiny he would as a vice-presidential nominee. But he has proved he can win in a battleground state against a credible opponent.

— Jonathan Weisman

With all eyes on the veepstakes, here’s a look at what we know now about where the top contenders will be this weekend and Monday.

  • Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was slated to attend three fund-raisers in the Hamptons this weekend, but he cleared his schedule. The governor hasn’t announced any appearances over the weekend.

  • Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky has also freed up his calendar. He canceled a planned stop in Kentucky scheduled for Friday. He is expected to join a scheduled Zoom call with donors on Friday night, and is set to headline a fund-raiser for the Harris Victory Fund in Chicago on Monday evening.

  • On Saturday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will attend a fund-raiser for the vice president’s campaign at the home of two donors in Holderness, N.H.

  • Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota will campaign in New Hampshire on Sunday. On Monday evening, he will headline a fund-raiser for the Harris Victory Fund in Minneapolis.

  • Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona has said he will be with family all weekend at his home in Tucson, Ariz.

— Taylor Robinson



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