To Josh Shapiro’s supporters, the case for him as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate was clear: He was the popular governor of Pennsylvania, and could help her lock down the most important battleground state on the map.
Ultimately, of course, she went with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota instead, leaving Pennsylvania Democrats to confront a new reality.
After years of basking in attention from the Scranton-born President Biden, and after roughly two weeks of furious speculation about Mr. Shapiro’s potential promotion, their state no longer stars on their party’s presidential ticket.
Democrats may reassess Ms. Harris’s choice of a running mate in hindsight if she narrowly loses Pennsylvania, the electoral-vote-rich state that decided the 2020 election for Mr. Biden and is universally seen as pivotal and highly competitive again this year.
But for now, interviews with even some of Mr. Shapiro’s strongest backers in Pennsylvania suggest that most Democrats, riding a wave of newfound momentum, have not only made peace with Ms. Harris’s choice — they have also embraced it fully.
“We like to have our favorite son there, naturally,” said former Representative Robert A. Brady, the chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, who was a vocal Shapiro supporter during the vice-presidential search.
Yet Mr. Brady sounded more than mollified after watching the top two Democrats roll out their partnership at a raucous rally in Philadelphia this week — after an effusive introduction by Mr. Shapiro. Asked if he thought the race was harder for Democrats in his state without the governor, Mr. Brady replied, “Not according to what we saw on Tuesday.”
“It will be competitive,” he said. “But I think that there’s such an energy.”
In Pennsylvania and across the country, Democrats are invigorated after Mr. Biden bowed out of the presidential contest, ending a painful intraparty fight and what had seemed like a long slog toward a November defeat. Their sense of catharsis has given way to displays of enthusiasm for Ms. Harris that draw comparisons to then Senator Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008.
In key battleground states, however, party officials stress that the general election is still poised to be close and unpredictable, as voters worry about issues like the cost of living, the broader economy and a volatile global landscape. The presidential ticket shake-up put Democrats back in the game, the argument goes, but the road ahead is long and difficult.
Given that backdrop, some had argued that Mr. Shapiro was the obvious choice to be Ms. Harris’s running mate.
In a recent Fox News poll, his favorability rating was 61 percent, strikingly high in such a closely divided state. In his past races for governor and state attorney general, he made inroads in more rural and conservative parts of the state that have drifted further from the national party, while running up the margins in the suburbs.
“If Josh was on the ticket, you couldn’t guarantee you were going to bring all those people over,” said Larry Ceisler, a Democratic public affairs executive in Pennsylvania. “But what you could guarantee is that he could open the door to them listening to a persuasive argument.”
But, he added, “Democrats, even though a lot of people are disappointed personally that Josh is not on the ticket, we believe that there’s a very, very good chance to win Pennsylvania. But I do think that Gov. Shapiro’s participation is very important.”
In his rousing address at the rally on Tuesday, Mr. Shapiro promised that “I’m going to be working my tail off” for the ticket. Though known to be ambitious, he has also emphasized that he is happy as his state’s chief executive, a role he has held for less than two years. Privately, he had appeared more cautious about the prospect of the vice presidency than others in the mix, asking about his role and responsibilities, according to multiple people familiar with the selection process.
A Shapiro adviser said that the governor planned to help Democrats up and down the ballot, noting that he frequently spends time in parts of the state where sightings of Democrats are rare (an approach partly inspired by Mr. Obama, Mr. Shapiro told The New York Times last week).
“What I heard throughout that process was a combination of people saying, ‘He would be great,’ and people saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to lose him here yet,’” said Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat from Pennsylvania.
Historically, vice-presidential nominees have not always delivered their home states, and the Harris team’s polling did not suggest that Mr. Shapiro would bring a decisive advantage in Pennsylvania.
While exit polling showed that he won 16 percent of Republicans in his 2022 race against a far-right opponent, and 64 percent of independents, state races tend to be less partisan than federal ones that determine the balance of power in Washington. Democrats and Republicans running for governor, for example, have a greater ability to win on unfriendly political terrain than candidates for Senate or the presidency.
Jeff Bartos, a Republican from suburban Philadelphia who ran in Pennsylvania’s Senate primary in 2022, said he considered Mr. Shapiro a longtime friend. His wife, Sheryl Bartos, co-hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Shapiro in 2022.
But given the spate of challenges Mr. Bartos sees facing the country and the state — including concerns about energy — he said he would have supported former President Donald J. Trump regardless of what the Democratic ticket looked like.
“No matter how you look at the election, Vice President Harris was always going to have to answer for the policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” Mr. Bartos said.
Many Democrats realize they will not convert most Republicans, or fully win back the white working-class voters who were once reliably Democratic but have trended hard against their party — but they also know they cannot afford to lose those voters by overwhelming margins.
Mr. Walz, a liberal governor who can speak the language of the more conservative heartland, is responsible for taking on that challenge.
A former high school teacher and football coach who represented a largely rural House district before becoming governor, he brings a plain-spoken and affable Midwestern sensibility to a ticket led by a former prosecutor from coastal California.
“Governor Walz will be a key messenger in these rural areas where we’re focused on limiting Republicans’ margins,” Dan Kanninen, the battleground states director for the Harris-Walz campaign, said in a memo released Wednesday.
He said the campaign was working “to make inroads in historically safe Republican areas” by establishing operations in Pennsylvania’s Union, Lancaster, Cumberland and York Counties, all places Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2020.
A campaign aide said the team was considering sending Mr. Walz to local football games, and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis of Pennsylvania said he thought the Minnesota governor would connect with working-class voters in the state, including in old steel towns, though he acknowledged that Pennsylvanians did not know much about him yet.
“This is going to be a close race,” Mr. Davis said. Emphasizing the importance of on-the-ground field organizing, he continued: “We have to own the ground. We have to be in communities all across Pennsylvania — in communities, sometimes, where it’s not easy to be a Democrat.”
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