No one knows better than Vice President Kamala Harris the importance of choosing the right running mate. Harris is now the leading candidate to succeed President Joe Biden as the likely Democratic presidential nominee – a look at the top contenders on the ballot.
Andy Beshear
The Kentucky governor cemented his reputation as the party’s rising star by defeating candidates supported by Donald Trump in a Republican stronghold.
Beshear showed a disciplined, hard-nosed style in his re-election bid last year, defeating then-Attorney General Daniel Cameron. The governor urged Democrats to follow his winning formula by focusing on everyday concerns facing Americans, from good-paying jobs to quality education and health care.
Beshear, 46, supports abortion rights, but in Kentucky he is taking a message against what he sees as an extreme ban that makes no exceptions for victims of rape and incest.
He won widespread praise for his empathy and attention to detail as he led the Bluegrass State through the COVID-19 pandemic and directed the response to tornadoes and floods that caused massive damage. He honed his oratory skills by holding regular press conferences that often lasted about an hour.
Beshear has experienced record economic growth in Kentucky and typically begins his speeches by touting the state’s recent economic successes. He often mentions his Christian faith and how it guides his policies.
Beshear is a lawyer by profession and won election as the state’s attorney general in 2015. In 2019, he ousted Trump-backed Republican Governor Matt Bevin.
The son of two-term governor Steve Beshear, Beshear entered politics with a sturdy pedigree but faced tougher political obstacles. Unlike his father, Andy Beshear faced a fully Republican-controlled legislature, and Republican lawmakers have blocked some of his priorities. One of them is state-funded preschool for every four-year-old child in Kentucky.
— By Bruce Schreiner
Roy Cooper
The governor of North Carolina has won six statewide elections over the course of twenty years in a state where Republicans regularly prevail in similar elections at the federal level and also control the legislature.
Cooper, 67, has enjoyed high approval ratings as governor and benefited from the state’s booming economy, for which his administration and lawmakers get credit. He also portrays himself as a champion for public education and abortion rights. While Cooper finally convinced Republican lawmakers to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act last year, other efforts have been thwarted by a General Assembly with veto-proof majorities that have undermined his formal powers.
Cooper was from a tiny town in Nash County, about 50 miles east of Raleigh. He was a high school quarterback and chairman of the Young Democrats at the University of North Carolina, where he earned both his bachelor’s and law degrees. “Coop,” as his friends called him, came home and worked in his father’s law firm.
Cooper defeated the incumbent Democratic representative in a 1986 state House primary and was elected to the General Assembly. He served for 14 years and later became Senate Majority Leader.
Cooper was elected attorney general in 2000 and served for 16 years. In that office, he is perhaps best known nationally for finding three former Duke University lacrosse players innocent after they were accused of sexual assault by an escort dancer.
Cooper defeated another incumbent, Republican Governor Pat McCrory, by about 10,000 votes in 2016. A key campaign issue was the “toilet law” signed by McCrory, which requires transgender people to employ public restrooms that correspond to the gender indicated on their birth certificate. As governor, Cooper quickly reached an agreement with lawmakers to partially repeal the law.
His tenure as governor was also marked by restrictions on business and school activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. He won re-election in 2020 by 4.5 percentage points, even though Trump won the state’s electoral votes.
Cooper and his wife Kristin have three adult daughters.
— By Gary Robertson
Mark Kelly
The Arizona senator used his career as an astronaut to build a reputation as a moderate politician in a state that has long supported Republicans.
In his two campaigns – the first in 2020 to finish the term of the tardy Republican Senator John McCain and the second two years later for a full term – Kelly has received more votes than any other Democrat on the ballot, beating Biden, who narrowly won Arizona, by two percentage points in 2020.
Kelly’s first foray into the national political spotlight was a tragedy. His wife, then-US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson grocery store. The shooting left six people dead and marked an early reckoning with political violence and partisan hatred.
Giffords’ survival made her a national inspiration but ended her own promising political career. She and Kelly later formed a gun control advocacy group, and Giffords was a powerful surrogate as Kelly took her place in politics.
In the Senate, Kelly focused on national security and the military, as well as the drought plaguing the Western U.S. He was instrumental in drafting the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill signed by Biden to boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
Kelly was a test pilot in the Navy and flew 39 combat missions during the Gulf War before joining NASA, where he flew three missions on the Space Shuttle.
The New Jersey native settled with Giffords in Tucson after retiring from NASA and the Navy.
Unlike Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat two years before Kelly but later left the party to become an independent, Kelly has managed to retain the support of the party’s base without alienating independent voters. —By Jonathan J. Cooper
Josh Shapiro
Shapiro is currently halfway through his second year as governor of Pennsylvania after easily winning the last election, devastatingly defeating a far-right candidate supported by Trump.
Shapiro, 51, has served as Biden’s deputy and assisted the president in cable appearances, and he has years of experience targeting Trump – first as a state attorney general and now as governor.
He has won three statewide elections – two for attorney general, one for governor – using a tightly planned, disciplined campaign style, offering voters something of a more reserved alternative to the state’s brash political star, Senator John Fetterman.
As governor, Shapiro has begun to shed his buttoned-up public persona and become more assertive and outspoken. In a recent appearance on MSNBC, he told Trump to “stop whining” and stop “talking about America.”
Shapiro, who is Jewish, has aggressively confronted what he sees as anti-Semitism at pro-Palestinian demonstrations and expressed solidarity with Israel in its efforts to destroy Hamas.
He is a staunch supporter of abortion rights in Pennsylvania and regularly touts his court victories against Trump, including fending off challenges to the 2020 election results.
In addition, he positions himself as a moderate representative of the second largest natural gas state in the USA on energy issues and emphasizes the need for bipartisanship in the politically divided state government.
— By Marc Levy
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Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky, Robertson from Raleigh, North Carolina, Cooper from Phoenix and Levy from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
