On Tuesday night, POLITICO put out a report that certainly leads to speculation that Vice President Kamala Harris will pick Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as her running mate. Such a report comes the night after another name once considered, Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), took his name out of contention.
Harris is expected to announce her running mate by next Tuesday, and she and the pick will hold their first rally in Philadelphia.
As the report mentioned:
The two will then barnstorm cities in seven swing states in four days. They’ll hit western Wisconsin, Detroit, Raleigh, Savannah, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
The stops will mark the first major campaign swing the presumptive ticket will make since Harris became the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee following President Joe Biden’s sudden departure from the race. The tour also underscores that the campaign believes the electoral map has expanded since Biden passed the baton to Harris.
The details of Harris and her running mate’s schedule were first shared with POLITICO by the campaign.
Such stops include battleground states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. President Joe Biden won all of those states except for North Carolina in 2020, though former and potentially future President Donald Trump was leading in all of them when it looked like 2024 would be a rematch between Trump and Biden.
In sharing the report co-authored with Holly Otterbein, Eugene Daniels also noted that a Harris campaign aide cautioned them "against reading too much into the first city chosen for the tour..."
A Harris campaign aide cautioned us against reading too much into the first city chosen for the tour ...
— Eugene Daniels (@EugeneDaniels2) July 31, 2024
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The report, while mentioning the speculation about Shapiro, also further stressed how the decision has not yet been made, and there could be other reasons for choosing Pennsylvania as the state to hold the first rally as part of the tour:
If Harris chooses Shapiro as her running mate, Philadelphia would make an obvious place to roll out the news, given that he hails from the area’s suburbs. But it’s also a diverse, vote-rich city that every presidential nominee must tend to thanks to the state’s 19 electoral votes, and it’s possible Harris’ plans don’t signal anything beyond that.
A Harris campaign aide cautioned against reading too much into the first city chosen for the tour.
Harris said a decision about her No. 2 spot on ticket has not been finalized. Asked by reporters on Tuesday if she has selected her running mate, she said “not yet.”
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Shapiro said on Tuesday that he had not spoken to Harris since July 21, the day that Biden dropped out.
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Shapiro declined to answer questions about whether he would be interested in being on the ticket with Harris or if he has submitted vetting materials to her team, saying, “The vice president has a very deeply personal decision to make right now: who she wants to run with, who she wants to govern with, and who can be by her side when she has to make the toughest decisions for the American people. I trust she will make that decision on her own terms when she is ready.”
Shapiro would be an interesting pick. He handily won his 2022 gubernatorial election with 56.5 percent of the vote, close to 15 points more than Republican Doug Mastriano.
Pennsylvania is a must-win state and part of the blue wall. Trump was leading Biden there before the president dropped out of the race. What polls have come in since Biden dropped out of the race show it looks to be a slightly closer race in the Keystone State.
That being said, there have also been concerns from fellow Democrats and the mainstream media about Shapiro being Jewish and the supposed "risks" that would pose. The Democratic Party, the Biden-Harris administration, and a ticket with Harris at the top for 2024 have an anti-Israel and pro-Hamas base to cater to. States like Michigan are also considered must-win battleground states.
There's also concerns about Shapiro to do with alleged issues over sexism and covering up sexual harassment.
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