Harris begins final phase of accelerated VP search

The law firm hired by the Harris campaign to investigate potential vice presidential candidates has completed its work, leaving the final decision — the most important yet of the still-new campaign — squarely in Vice President Kamala Harris’ hands.

Covington & Burling, the Washington law firm tasked with the vetting, completed the job Thursday afternoon and turned over its findings to Harris, according to two people briefed on the process.

Harris has blocked off several hours on her calendar this weekend to meet with the men being considered to join the ticket, according to two people who had viewed her schedule and who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private process. The Harris campaign has suggested it will announce the decision by Tuesday evening, when the vice president and her to-be-named running mate begin a five-day tour of presidential battleground states, starting in Philadelphia.

Several of the contenders, including Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, canceled events this weekend, reflecting both a desire to be available for those conversations and to avoid drawing additional speculation from the news media about their chances.

The choice of a running mate is one of the most consequential decisions of Harris’ political career, one that can pay dividends in votes and years of counsel or backfire disastrously. In some ways, Harris is setting a direction for the future of the party, a reality she intimately understands given her own head-spinning ascension to the top of the ticket.

But unlike previous nominees, who spent months considering candidates, she must make her decision on a compressed timeline. The shortened process clashes with what some former aides described as her typically deliberative decision-making approach.

While other nominees started with lists of dozens of names, Harris has quickly narrowed hers to six, with Shapiro, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona widely seen by Democrats as the top contenders. Beshear, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have also participated in the vetting process.

Those officials participated in an extensive and intrusive process that included hourslong videoconference interviews with former Attorney General Eric Holder, who once oversaw Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting, and Dana Remus, a former White House counsel for President Joe Biden and an outside legal counsel for the Harris campaign.

They submitted answers to hundreds of inquiries on a questionnaire and turned over hundreds of pages of documents including financial forms and policy papers — even old news releases issued by their offices. The process is meant to surface any personal or political issues that could later become a headache for the campaign.

People close to Harris say that she had not devoted serious thought to the issue of selecting a vice president before Biden announced a little more than a week ago that he would exit the race. But they note that she is more intimately familiar with the position than some previous nominees given her current role.

“She never had to make a decision like this before, and it’s different from hiring a top staff member or something like that,” said Brian Brokaw, who managed Harris’ campaigns for California attorney general. But, given her experience as vice president, he said: “She probably has a very clear image in her mind of, what are the best traits and life experiences and job experiences to fill that position?”

Former staff members in her Senate office and on her 2020 presidential campaign said that while she valued competence and loyalty, she also required a high level of personal rapport and comfort with people with whom she would work closely.

“At the end of the day, it’s going to come down to who can she have a relationship with, who can have the hard conversations with her,” said Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., who has known Harris for more than a decade and served as a senior adviser on her 2020 presidential campaign. “This is somebody she’s going to have to see on a fairly regular basis for the next four years. And you got to do more than just tolerate them. There has to be some genuine like and care and a good vibe.”

While the selection has dominated the conversation within Democratic circles for days, there is deep uncertainty around her ultimate decision. The process has been kept to a small group of aides, some of whom have no official role in the campaign, and to family members, including her brother-in-law Tony West.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for Harris, said the campaign would not provide public updates “until the vice president announces who will be serving as her running mate.”

As closely held as her deliberations have been, some broad choices have clearly been made. Harris is seriously considering only white men, reflecting concerns in some quarters of the party that the country will not elect two women or two people of color. She has also placed a premium on executive experience: Her list includes four governors, a Cabinet secretary and a senator.

Others have stressed the importance of selecting someone from a battleground state, such as Shapiro or Kelly, who could help Harris gain an electoral edge in what is widely expected to remain a razor-tight contest. Both men are viewed as moderates and have records of winning independent and even some Republican voters.

Champions of Kelly argue that his biography — the son of police officers, a Navy pilot, an astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was gravely wounded by a mass shooter — and his embrace of tougher immigration measures could also help inoculate Harris on concerns about her role in border policy.

Walz, a folksy Midwestern former high school teacher and football coach, has become a liberal darling over the past few weeks, winning praise for calling Trump “weird” and coining a line of attack that has spread throughout the party.

And Shapiro, who like Harris is a former state attorney general, brings a proven record of building broad coalitions across perhaps the most critical swing state, where 61% of voters viewed him favorably in a recent Fox News poll.

Shapiro and Harris have known each other for years: In 2006, Harris, then the San Francisco district attorney, and Shapiro, then a state representative, were tapped for a prestigious program for rising stars in American politics. They have remained in touch.

Previous presidential campaigns have spent up to five months searching for a vice presidential candidate. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in 2012, started with a list of more than 50 names. He also spent time on the campaign trail with each of his five finalists. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016, had a list of 39 names that included Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who was announced as her running mate four months later.

Harris, who began the process last week with just 12 contenders, has not yet met in person with any of her top choices.

That tight time frame will test what former aides describe as Harris’ thorough, sometimes lawyerly approach to absorbing information before a big decision.

“She’s somebody who wants to be briefed on every possible scenario around every issue that she’s confronted with,” Brokaw said. He added, “She moves fast once a decision is made.”

Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor of California, says Harris strikes a careful balance between her instinct and a review of facts.

When she decided to run in 2018, Kounalakis, a first-time candidate, asked for Harris’ endorsement.

Even though the two women had been friends for nearly two decades, Harris asked a lot of questions and collected information about her campaign. Ultimately, however, she acted on instinct to back her bid, said Kounalakis, who is now among the leading contenders for governor in 2026.

Kounalakis said Harris was most likely approaching her vice presidential selection with a similar formula.

“My sense is that, at the end of the day, she will be the one to make the decision,” she said. “It won’t be people convincing her. It will be her, herself, evaluating all of the information and a little bit of her own instinct and her own sense of who she likes.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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