Following President Joe Biden’s sudden decision to drop out of the race on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris appears likely to coast toward the Democratic nomination next month.
That means the race to be her vice president is already taking center stage among Democrats.
Several names are already floating around, and some speculate that the vice president will want to elevate one of the party’s many governors as she takes on former President Donald Trump this fall. Some of the top names so far include Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Roy Cooper of North Carolina.
Beshear — first elected governor in his deep-red state in 2019 — appears to be the first one making big, public moves.
In an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday, the Kentucky governor endorsed Harris, calling her “smart and strong.”
Beshear then immediately pivoted to attacking Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, seizing on comments he made during his 2022 Senate run about abortion and abusive marriages.
The Kentucky governor was asked whether he would serve as Harris’s running mate. “Well I think if somebody calls you on that, you at least listen,” Beshear said. Then he pivoted back to Vance.
“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is, and what they look like,” Beshear said. “Because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here.”
Vance’s family is from Kentucky, and he spent significant time in the rural eastern part of the state as a kid, as he detailed in “Hillbilly Elegy.”
But the Ohio senator grew up primarily in Middletown, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati that’s about 150 miles north of his family’s ancestral home in Kentucky.
“I think if somebody calls you on that, what you do is at least listen. And I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like. Because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here.”— @GovAndyBeshear on the possibility of running for VP pic.twitter.com/M6MskbCixq
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) July 22, 2024
Cooper, another VP contender, also appeared on Morning Joe on Monday, offering his endorsement to Harris as well.
As of Monday, no significant challenge to Harris’s candidacy has emerged.
She’s locked up endorsements of most Democratic lawmakers, and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, after briefly flirting with the idea of running against her, said on Monday that he wouldn’t do so after all.
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