Who’s No. 2? Four top Democrats emerge as possible running mates for Kamala Harris

No one knows the importance of picking the right running mate better than Vice President Kamala Harris. With Harris now the leading contender to succeed President Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, a look at the top candidates to be on the ticket.

Andy Beshear

The Kentucky governor earned his reputation as the party’s rising star by defeating candidates backed by Donald Trump in a Republican stronghold.

Beshear displayed a disciplined, tenacious style when he won reelection last year, defeating then-Attorney General Daniel Cameron. The governor has urged Democrats to follow his winning formula by focusing on the everyday concerns of Americans, from good-paying jobs to quality education and health care.

Beshear, 46, supports abortion rights, but in Kentucky he has focused his message on fighting what he calls an extreme ban that makes no exceptions for victims of rape and incest.

He has earned praise for his empathy and attention to detail as he guided the Bluegrass State through the COVID-19 pandemic and led the response to tornadoes and floods that caused widespread damage. He has honed his public speaking skills by holding frequent press conferences that often last an hour or so.

Beshear has presided over Kentucky’s record economic growth and typically begins his briefings by touting the state’s latest economic victories. He frequently mentions his Christian faith and how it informs his policymaking.

Beshear, a lawyer by profession, was elected the state’s attorney general in 2015. In 2019, he defeated Trump-backed Republican Governor Matt Bevin.

Beshear entered politics with a strong reputation as the son of two-term Gov. Steve Beshear, but he has faced tougher political obstacles. Andy Beshear, unlike his father, has faced an entirely GOP-controlled Legislature, and Republican lawmakers have thwarted some of his priorities, including state-funded preschool for every 4-year-old in Kentucky.

— By Bruce Schreiner

Roy Kuiper

The North Carolina governor has won six statewide general elections in two decades in a state where Republicans typically win similar federal elections and also control the legislature.

Cooper, 67, has enjoyed strong approval ratings as governor, benefiting from a booming state economy that his administration and lawmakers take credit for. He also portrays himself as a fighter for public education and abortion rights. Though Cooper finally convinced GOP lawmakers last year to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, other efforts have been stymied by a General Assembly with veto-proof majorities that have eroded his formal powers.

Cooper, born in the small town of Nash County about 50 miles east of Raleigh, was a high school quarterback and head of the Young Democrats at the University of North Carolina, where he earned both his bachelor’s and law degrees. “Coop,” as he was known to friends, came home and worked at his father’s law firm.

Cooper surprised the incumbent Democrat in a 1986 House primary race and was elected to the Assembly, where he served for 14 years and later became Senate majority leader.

Cooper was elected attorney general in 2000, a position he held for 16 years. In that role, he is perhaps best known nationally for exonerating three former Duke University lacrosse players after they were accused of sexual abuse by an escort dancer.

Cooper defeated another incumbent governor, Republican Pat McCrory, by about 10,000 votes in 2016. A key campaign issue was McCrory’s “bathroom law,” which required transgender people to use public restrooms that matched the gender on their birth certificates. As governor, Cooper quickly reached a deal with lawmakers to partially repeal the law.

His time as governor was also marked by restrictions on business and school activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. He won re-election in 2020 by 4.5 percentage points, even as Trump won the state’s electoral votes.

Cooper and his wife Kristin have three adult daughters.

— By Gary Robertson

Mark Kelly

The Arizona senator leveraged his career as an astronaut to build a brand as a moderate politician in a state that has long supported Republicans.

In his two campaigns — the first in 2020 to finish out the term of the late Republican Sen. John McCain and the second two years later for a full term — Kelly has earned more votes than any other Democrat on the ballot, outpolling Biden, who narrowly won Arizona, by 2 percentage points in 2020.

Kelly’s first appearance in the national political spotlight came in tragedy. His wife, then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head while meeting voters outside a Tucson grocery store. The shooting left six people dead and led to an early reckoning with political violence and partisan rancor.

Giffords’ survival made her a national inspiration, but it ended her promising political career. She and Kelly founded a gun control lobbying group, and Giffords has proven to be a powerful surrogate as Kelly has taken her place in politics.

In the Senate, Kelly has focused on national security and the military, as well as the drought ravaging the American West. He was instrumental in drafting the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill signed by Biden to boost U.S. semiconductor production.

Kelly was a test pilot in the Navy and flew 39 combat missions during the Gulf War before joining NASA, where he flew three space shuttle missions.

Originally from New Jersey, he settled with Giffords in Tucson after retiring from NASA and the Navy.

Unlike Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat two years before Kelly but later left the party to become an independent, Kelly has managed to retain the party’s base of support without alienating independent voters. —By Jonathan J. Cooper

Josh Shapiro

Shapiro is halfway through his second year as governor of Pennsylvania, after easily winning his last election by defeating a far-right candidate backed by Trump.

Shapiro, 51, is Biden’s deputy and has supported the president in cable network appearances. He has years of experience targeting Trump, first as attorney general and now as governor.

He has won three statewide races — two for attorney general, one for governor — with a tightly orchestrated, disciplined campaign style, offering voters a more low-key alternative to the state’s brash political star, Sen. John Fetterman.

As governor, Shapiro has begun to shed his restrained public demeanor and become more confident and level-headed. In a recent appearance on MSNBC, he said Trump needs to “stop whining” and stop “talking shit about America.”

Shapiro, who is Jewish, aggressively opposed what he saw as anti-Semitism emerging at pro-Palestinian demonstrations and expressed solidarity with Israel in its efforts to eliminate Hamas.

He is a staunch supporter of abortion rights in Pennsylvania and frequently promotes his court victories against Trump, including defeating challenges to the 2020 election results.

He also profiles himself as a moderate on energy issues in the nation’s second-largest natural gas state and emphasizes the need for bipartisan cooperation in the politically divided state government.

— By Marc Levy

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Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky; Robertson from Raleigh, North Carolina; Cooper from Phoenix; and Levy from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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