Vice President Harris will interview at least three of the finalists to serve as her running mate Sunday in Washington as she moves closer to making her choice, according to multiple people familiar with her plans.
Harris will meet with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. It is unclear how many of the three other finalists — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois — have been invited to meet with Harris. In choosing her running mate, Harris is not solely concerned with electability but is also looking for a governing partner and someone she feels chemistry with, her allies say.
Harris spent Saturday at her residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, where lawyers, led by Eric Holder, the former attorney general, gave presentations on the finalists based on deep examinations of their backgrounds, experience and potential vulnerabilities, a person familiar with the process said. Holder and a team of lawyers at Covington & Burling oversaw the vetting of the officials in contention on an extremely compressed timeline.
Presidential nominees usually take months to select a running mate, but only a few weeks have passed since President Biden withdrew from the race and Harris became the likely nominee. Holder and his team finished the process this week after poring over reams of paperwork on the candidates.
Harris will announce her vice-presidential pick by Tuesday, when she and the candidate appear in Philadelphia for the first of seven rallies over the course of five days. The two will campaign in each of the seven most competitive states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
On Friday, some of the finalists interviewed with Harris’s senior staff, including Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, and Sheila Nix, Harris’s campaign chief of staff. Harris’s campaign also brought on Liz Allen, the current undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department, to serve as chief of staff to Harris’s running mate. Allen worked as Harris’s communications director when she was Biden’s running mate on the 2020 ticket.
Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Harris’s campaign, declined to comment on the process, pointing to his previous statement that the campaign does not “expect to have additional updates until the Vice President announces who will be serving as her running mate.”
The finalists are all White men, reflecting an assumption that voters would prefer a White male running mate for the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent leading a major-party presidential ticket. Four years ago, Biden selected Harris amid a sense by many in the Democratic Party that it was important to have a woman and a person of color on the ticket.
Since Harris became the presumptive nominee, her potential running mates have blanketed the airwaves trying to demonstrate how they would be an asset as vice president while also taking shots at Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), former president Donald Trump’s running mate, ahead of a potential debate with him should they be selected.
Pritzker put out an almost four-minute video on social media to tout his accomplishments as governor while Gabby Giffords, the wife of Kelly, posted a video about their marriage. Allies to Buttigieg, meanwhile, have asked his donors and supporters to make the public case for his bid.
As Harris wraps up her process, the finalists have had to change their schedules to accommodate interviews. Walz had originally planned to campaign for Harris in New Hampshire on Sunday before canceling the appearance. Teddy Tschann, a spokesman for the governor, said in a statement that Walz’s “schedule has changed” without providing additional information.
Buttigieg, who pulled out of an official stop in Indiana on Friday, attended a fundraiser for Harris in Holderness, N.H., hosted by Gary Hirshberg, the co-founder of Stonyfield Farms, the yogurt maker and dairy company. The fundraiser raised more than $800,000, according to a person familiar who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share financial information.
Shapiro pulled out of a weekend fundraising swing in the Hamptons, and Beshear canceled a Friday stop in western Kentucky.
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez in Phoenix contributed to this report.
