Abrams, Harris Diverge on Approach to Biden’s Running Mate Hunt
Biden Running Mate Hunt Sees Abrams, Harris Diverge on Approach
(Bloomberg) -- The hunt for Joe Biden’s running mate is intensifying as some candidates make their interest in the job clear.
Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris have both taken steps to ensure their names are included in any public lists, but while Abrams has been actively campaigning, Harris has taken a subtler approach.
Biden, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon and strategist Anita Dunn are talking to elected officials and party elders about the decision, according to two people familiar with the outreach. The four members of the vice presidential advisory committee, which includes former Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, are doing the same.
Biden has said he doesn’t expect to have his list whittled down to the final few until July.
That hasn’t stopped several candidates from letting it be known that they would be “honored” to stand next to him -- even virtually -- at the nominating convention this summer.
Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois spoke on two public Biden campaign calls last week, one with the press on the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back the Affordable Care Act and the other to Asian American Pacific Islanders for Biden.
“Just having my name mentioned in the same breath as Tammy Baldwin and the likes of Amy Klobuchar is really breathtaking for me,” Duckworth said Tuesday on ABC’s “The View.”
Biden’s pick is particularly meaningful. He has promised his running mate will be a woman. Other candidates, Republican John McCain in 2008 and Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984, selected Sarah Palin and Geraldine Ferraro but included men in their search. Given Biden’s age of 77, there has been speculation that he would only serve one term if elected, and his vice president would become an early favorite to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2024.
Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are among the other most talked-about contenders – though not all are seen as likely picks or the only candidates under consideration.
Abrams, who lost a race for Georgia governor in 2018, has been very public in expressing her interest in the job, even before she formally endorsed Biden on Tuesday. She will join him for part of an MSNBC virtual town hall on Thursday night, a chance to test their chemistry remotely, just as he has in recent podcasts and fundraisers with Harris, Klobuchar and Whitmer.
“I have been brought into this national conversation since last year,” she told the New Yorker in an interview published last week, explaining why she’s been so clear about her interest in joining the Democratic ticket. “And, at each phase of the conversation, I always answer directly, because I know that people of color, that young girls, are watching me and how I respond. My obligation is to be who I am, and to not allow traditions to continue and perpetuate the consequences.”
Harris has been less direct in her interest in the vice presidential slot, saying she is “honored” to be considered but is focused on her job as a senator. She has been actively working on coronavirus legislation, particularly around racial disparities.
Still, Harris has also appeared at a fundraiser with Biden and has made clear in more subtle ways that she’s interested in being on the ticket. She was the subject of recent articles in the New York Times and Politico that have intensified the buzz around her. Some Democrats saw the stories as efforts at sleight-of-hand self-promotion by Harris, according to three people familiar with the vice presidential effort.
Harris has recently hired a handful of aides to keep her political operation alive, in part to potentially support her through the vice presidential selection process. Rohini Kosoglu, a longtime aide who joined the campaign late, is serving as her chief of staff, and Sabrina Singh, a veteran of Cory Booker and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, is serving as a senior adviser and communications director. Mindy Myers, a Democratic operative who worked with Warren at the start of her tenure in the Senate, is also advising Harris.
Debate Memory
Jill Biden, the presumptive nominee’s wife, referred to Harris’ summer debate-stage attack on Biden’s views of busing to desegregate schools in the 1970s as “a gut punch” as recently as early March, but she’s also made clear that she feels warmly toward Harris because she first met the former California attorney general through Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s late son, who was the attorney general of Delaware.
Former President Barack Obama has advised Biden to “find people who can make up for what you don’t have as much experience in doing,” Biden said at a fundraiser earlier this month, and that view is informing his thinking. In addition to pledging to choose a woman, he’s also indicated he’d like to choose someone who is younger. The only prospective candidate close to his age is Warren, who will be 71 next month.
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