Vice President Harris holed up at her residence at the Naval Observatory on Monday to finalize the selection of her running mate, perhaps the biggest decision of her nascent campaign, as plans coalesced for the joint campaign swing that Democrats hope will generate excitement for the ticket this week.
Harris met Sunday in Washington with at least three finalists: Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. After the running-mate announcement, which is expected to include several online components, including a video, Harris and her newly minted election partner plan to launch a multistate tour with a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.
As strategists in both parties awaited the selection — on which an enormous amount of strategy, messaging and advertising will depend — a Harris campaign spokesperson, Kevin Munoz, said just before 4:30 p.m. Monday that Harris had not yet made her decision.
The campaign was nonetheless moving forward with plans for the national campaign swing. The trip is set to start in Philadelphia before heading to Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada through Saturday.
Harris’s campaign schedule has been unusually compressed, since President Biden ended his reelection bid on July 21, and Democrats are hoping the five-day tour will help sustain the enthusiasm that has so far accompanied her campaign, enabling her to ride Democrats’ excitement into the party convention beginning Aug. 19.
The campaign announced that the indie folk group Bon Iver would perform at the second stop in the campaign tour, Wednesday in Eau Claire, Wis. Last week, the rapper Megan Thee Stallion performed at Harris’s rally in Atlanta.
A stop later in the week in Savannah, Ga., was postponed because of Hurricane Debby, which made landfall in Florida on Monday morning and is expected to move up the East Coast.
In the meantime, the Harris campaign has been using the highly anticipated announcement to raise money, telling supporters they could be among the first to know the identity of the running mate if they donate at least $20. Such donors would be able to “join an exclusive live stream with the Vice President and her running mate,” according to recent emails to supporters, which did not give any timing for the live stream.
Other Democratic leaders were awaiting the news, anxious to see which of their colleagues would be catapulted onto the national stage.
“She has a wealth of talent from which to choose,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said Monday on MSNBC. He said that he personally knows all the governors Harris is considering and that each would be “tremendous.” He also praised Kelly and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“I’ve not been for outside pressure from anyone because this is a very personal choice for her,” Cooper added. “This has to be a governing and campaigning partner for her. She needs to make that decision. She knows what being a vice president is all about, so I think she’s got the best perspective of all.”
Cooper took himself out of consideration as Harris’s running mate early in the process. He explained Monday that he was concerned that if he’d been compelled to leave the state for long stretches to campaign, it would allow North Carolina’s Republican lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, who is known for highly inflammatory statements and is running to succeed Cooper, to seize the stage.
The final hours of Harris’s selection process were defined by intense jockeying on the part of various Democratic factions. Some progressives were pushing for Walz over Shapiro, citing the Pennsylvanian’s sometimes hard-hitting comments about pro-Palestinian protesters. Shapiro, who is Jewish, has compared some of the college protesters to the Ku Klux Klan and encouraged the University of Pennsylvania to break up encampments of pro-Palestinian protesters.
Some of Walz’s backers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), were set to take part in a “Progressives for Harris” call Monday night to rally support for her.
The home stretch of Harris’s search has also seen close attention paid to the schedules of possible running-mate contenders, as strategists on all sides hunt for clues on whom she might choose. Buttigieg, for example, is scheduled to begin a trip to Maine on Tuesday in his official capacity, suggesting that, at least for now, he is not making plans to be part of the running-mate reveal.
The selection will finalize the Democratic ticket at a remarkably late date, capping a period of almost unheard-of turmoil in the presidential campaign. Just three weeks ago, Biden was widely assumed to be the Democratic nominee, having announced a reelection bid and swept through the party’s primaries, and the vice president was set to reprise her role as his running mate.
All that changed when Biden, facing enormous pressure from inside his own party following a stumbling performance in a debate against former president Donald Trump on June 27, stepped aside, shaking up the race and making way for Harris as his likely replacement.
Republicans are gearing up for another jolt to the race with Harris’s selection. Trump’s campaign announced Monday that his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), would make stops effectively following Harris and her running mate as they take their tour through swing states around the country, starting with a Tuesday afternoon visit to Philadelphia before the new Democratic ticket makes its debut there.
A major task for Harris’s running mate will be taking on Vance, including in a possible vice-presidential debate.
Trump, in a media appearance Monday, criticized Harris as “ultra left, ultra radical,” comparing her unfavorably to the Democrats she has been mulling as potential vice-presidential candidates.
“In fact, all of the people she’s looking at are considered much better than her,” Trump told online streamer Adin Ross, adding that fellow Democrats “didn’t want to go through this roadblock” of challenging the sitting vice president. “… I think virtually, every one of them is considered better, smarter, would be a better president, than her.”
Harris had no public events on her calendar Monday. She participated in a private meeting with Biden and his national security team in the Situation Room to discuss tensions in the Middle East.