Just in case anyone had forgotten, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois released a nearly four-minute video this week promoting his accomplishments in office.
If there were any questions about the home life of Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, his wife, Gabrielle Giffords, resurfaced a testimonial about their loving marriage and posted it to social media.
And if someone was wondering about, say, fund-raising ability, Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Andy Beshear of Kentucky were scheduled to appear at last-minute simultaneous events on Monday afternoon in Minneapolis and Chicago. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was also set to do a fund-raiser on Saturday night in New Hampshire.
It is all for an audience of one: Vice President Kamala Harris. As the clock ticks down on her timeline to select a running mate, whom Ms. Harris is expected to announce by Tuesday, the men still in contention are doing whatever they can to showcase what they could bring to the ticket and keep themselves in the public eye.
That thirst has prompted a flood of gauzy videos, cable news appearances, fund-raisers and other stops — Mr. Walz will campaign for Ms. Harris on Sunday, also in New Hampshire — serving as a capstone to what has been a two-week sprint toward the first major decision of her presidential campaign. The vetting team, led by former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., completed its work on Thursday, leaving the choice in Ms. Harris’s hands after she conducts in-person interviews and spends time deliberating with her advisers.
The lobbying efforts come as Ms. Harris is having to choose a running mate without the typical months to spend time with potential candidates, weighing who would be best as both a political and a governing partner.
Past nominees have used the weeks leading up to their vice-presidential announcement as public tryouts, stumping with finalists as a test of camaraderie while spending important time deliberating behind the scenes.
In 2012, Mitt Romney held campaign events with each of the five finalists to be his running mate before choosing Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Romney said on Friday that he did not watch any of the TV appearances his potential running mates made during that period.
“Nope, never saw them on the screen,” Mr. Romney wrote in a text message. “Went on the trail together. Emphasis was capability if elected, not election impact, which we thought was minimal.”
Under this rushed time frame, the auditions have been more diffuse, spaced out across social media, cable television hits and speeches.
Whether those appearances matter to Ms. Harris remains unclear. It is not known how much of the outside content Ms. Harris, who plans to be in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, is consuming herself.
Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat and an early endorser of Ms. Harris’s previous presidential campaign, suggested that the question of who could draw sharp contrasts with Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, and the Republican ticket as a whole was relevant. But she sounded skeptical of the in-plain-view tryouts.
“I don’t think people talking publicly is going to sway her from her basic decision-making process,” she said.
In the meantime, Ms. Harris’s team has received reams of documents from each of the finalists, and it conducted video interviews this week.
Some of the top contenders canceled planned events for Friday and Saturday — when Ms. Harris had set aside time to conduct final interviews, according to two people who had been briefed on her schedule but were not authorized to speak publicly about the process. Aides for some of the contenders said they wanted to keep their schedules clear in case Ms. Harris’s team called.
Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania canceled a three-event fund-raising swing through the Hamptons, and Mr. Beshear pulled out of a stop in western Kentucky, prompting a new wave of headlines on Thursday.
“I was going to perform, of course, with Blink-182 on Sunday, but I’ve canceled in order to clear my schedule,” joked Mr. Pritzker in an interview on MSNBC, referring to the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago this weekend.
But for the scores of Democratic busybodies and political obsessives who carefully track the process, the prolific public appearances have provided seemingly endless fodder for each candidate’s backers to push out — and plenty of content for Ms. Harris to consume should she so choose.
Mr. Shapiro spent Friday at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, a historically Black college west of Philadelphia. There, he demonstrated his attack-dog chops, calling Mr. Trump a “coward” who had made “offensive” remarks this week by falsely questioning Ms. Harris’s Black identity. The first-term governor also called Mr. Vance a “phony.”
“Attacking the identify of the vice president doesn’t at all reflect on Vice President Harris, but shows a real insecurity about Donald Trump,” Mr. Shapiro said.
Mr. Walz wooed a group of Democratic donors on Friday in a remote meeting with the Democracy Alliance, a powerful network of major liberal donors, regaling a packed Zoom meeting with his strategies for winning over rural and working-class voters. He is heading to New Hampshire on Sunday for a series of surrogate events for Ms. Harris, including a summer barbecue with the New Hampshire Young Democrats.
Mr. Kelly spent the final days of the week doing a parade of cable TV hits in which he sought to focus attention on Mr. Trump’s torpedoing of a border security bill in February — an issue that Ms. Harris has made a focal point of her stump speeches and campaign videos.
“When Kamala Harris is president, we’re going to continue to work on this,” Mr. Kelly said on “Morning Joe,” an MSNBC show favored by Mr. Biden and many of the aides who work on the Harris campaign. “I’m looking forward to seeing Kamala Harris in the White House.”
Mr. Buttigieg, a popular news media presence for Democrats, has made the round of cable networks, with dozens of appearances.
On Sunday, he defended Ms. Harris’s record on immigration in a heated exchange on Fox News. On Monday, he cracked jokes with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” On Thursday, he discussed the importance of his appearances on Fox News to reach Republicans, making an appearance that effectively promoted the significance of his other appearances.
And on Friday, he charmed the ladies of “The View,” who had high hopes for his running-mate chances.
“If offered the position would you accept? Because we’d like that,” said Ana Navarro, a host of the show.
Mr. Buttigieg replied with the noncommittal ease of a practiced media star: “Of course, I’m flattered to be even mentioned in this context,” he said. “She’s going to make the choice that’s right for her, for the ticket, the campaign and of course the country.”
At times, Mr. Beshear has seemed ubiquitous on television, using his appearances to show how he might challenge Mr. Vance.
“He claims to be from eastern Kentucky, tries to write a book about it to profit off our people, and then he calls us lazy,” Mr. Beshear said recently on CNN.
Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, an admitted Shapiro partisan, said he did not know how the public jockeying might shape Ms. Harris’s perceptions. But it all amounted to positive advertising, he said, for the eventual ticket.
“When there’s a general sense as to who is in consideration, I think it’s natural that people would pay a lot of attention,” he said. “The main thing that each of these potential vice-presidential nominees are doing is they’re affirming the candidacy of Kamala Harris. They’re talking about her plans for the future, what she wants to do if she were elected president, and I think that can only help us win in November.”
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