White smoke. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has selected Governor Tim Walz as her number two in the race for the White House, several US media have reported. The two will present their candidacy in public this afternoon at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first leg of a tour of seven states in five days.
It is the most important decision Harris has made so far as a new presidential candidate — the vote to confirm her in the post ended on Monday — and one whose consequences could drag on for years, should she win the November elections. And it points to what her campaign priorities will be.
For days, the various power groups within the party lobbied, privately and sometimes very publicly, to promote their favorites. Unions, progressive groups and many legislators who collaborated with him during his twelve years as a congressman, supported the governor of Minnesota. Others aligned with centrist positions, supported the governor of Pennsylvania.
In her bid for Walz, Harris has emphasized the 60-year-old Minnesota governor’s communication skills, his ability to relate to the general public and his good relations with the US Congress.
The entire process has necessarily been rushed. Under normal circumstances, selecting a No. 2 for a presidential ticket takes months of analysis, discussions and painstaking research into the smallest details of candidates’ bank accounts, life histories and thoughts. It is a “political colonoscopy performed through a telescope,” as former Indiana governor Evan Bayh, the candidate Barack Obama passed over in favor of Joe Biden in 2008, has described it.
But these are not normal conditions for Harris’ campaign. The vice president took over from Joe Biden when the president dropped out of re-election two weeks ago, and this is all the time she has had to review her political partner options.
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A dozen people were on the initial lists. Half a dozen of them were screened after the public resignations of two of the most likely candidates, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. A team of lawyers led by former Attorney General Eric Holder was tasked with reviewing the documentation submitted by the half dozen finalists, in addition to Walz and Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; and the governors of Kentucky and Illinois, Andy Beshear and JB Pritzker, respectively.
The lawyers submitted their briefs to the vice president on Friday. Harris, who has traveled around the country for campaign events in recent months, had a full schedule, with no events. She spent the weekend carefully studying those briefs at her official residence at the Washington Observatory. She also met there in person and separately with three of the candidates: Shapiro, Walz and Kelly. It has not been confirmed whether she interviewed any of the other three finalists virtually.
Harris had made it clear that these interviews would be a key factor in her decision. She didn’t just want a running mate who would help her win the election. She also wanted one who could have political chemistry between them.
On Sunday, the senator from Arizona, a former astronaut and war veteran, appeared to be taking himself off the list. In a message on the social network X, the former Twitter account, which he deleted shortly after, he declared that from now on he would concentrate on working for the residents of his state. His spokesmen limited themselves to indicating that he had deleted the message because “it was giving rise to misunderstandings.”
On Monday, Harris continued her consultations with her advisers throughout the morning, before switching gears to participate in a White House National Security Council meeting alongside President Biden to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East.
Interest in finding out who will be the winner of the selection sparked all kinds of speculation on Monday, to the point that Harris’ campaign had to come forward to quell the rumor that a decision had already been made. “We understand the excitement and interest, but Vice President Harris has not yet made up her mind on her teammate!” spokesman Kevin Muñoz posted on social media X.
Harris and Walz will be making waves in the coming hours at the Liacouras Sports Hall at Temple University in Philadelphia. They are beginning their tour, which will take them in the coming days to the key swing states – Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada – to maintain enthusiasm among their voters and generate new momentum among the undecided in those states. The idea is that this enthusiasm will be linked to that generated by the Democratic Party convention in Chicago, which will open on the 19th, and leave the campaign with the wind in its face among the public and in the polls for the final stretch of the race, the months of September and October.
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