What does her first major decision as a presidential candidate say about Kamala Harris?
In picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential nominee, Harris chooses a candidate who hasn’t offended a significant wing of the Democratic base but can speak to rural and regional voters Democrats have been losing to Republicans on pocketbook issues.
This selection appears to be based on calculus rather than natural camaraderie.
It is reminiscent of Joe Biden’s selection of Harris as his nominee for vice president four years ago. Biden looked beyond fellow old white men to broaden his ticket’s appeal.
Harris, seeking to be the nation’s first woman president, chose somebody complementary as well.
Harris’ choice of Walz implicitly says something significant about her and how she might lead at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Harris chose to energize a wider swath of Democrats, wavering independents and disillusioned Republicans rather than narrowly gravitating to someone like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a former prosecutor like her.
With this pick, the native Bay Area resident (born in Oakland, and ascended to public office in San Francisco) is stepping out from President Joe Biden’s shadow and the ranks of California political heavyweights who once mentored her until she rose higher than any of them as the presidential nominee of their party.
Harris could have shored up a bigger electoral prize in Pennsylvania with the selection of Shapiro. But he had baggage of his own, a devout Jew whose pro-Israel stances had already inflamed the pro-Palestine wing of the party.
She could have picked Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, Navy veteran and rising star who helped turn his once-red state blue.
But Kelly has rankled some union leaders for opposing legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize.
She could have gone with one of the party’s most popular members and arguably the star of the Biden cabinet, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. But it’s unclear whether the country is ready to elect a woman of Asian and Jamaican descent as president and a gay man as vice president, even one who served in the military.
To consider Walz as merely a candidate by deduction, however, underestimates his potential. The Democratic ticket has a sense of seriousness and stability that former President Donald Trump and Republican running mate J.D. Vance lack.
Walz has captured considerable national attention thanks to a single-word utterance, recently calling Republican opponent Donald Trump “weird.”
To large cross-sections of America, Walz may be the most potent Democrat on the campaign stump to go after Trump both personally and politically.
