Former Vice President Joe Biden. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Joe Biden’s choice of a running mate is getting more treacherous with each news cycle.
Real-life events — from the outcry over the recent killing of black men in Minnesota and Georgia and a black woman in Kentucky to a mundane request for boating privileges in Michigan — are crashing into his already fraught decision over his No. 2.
Multiple VP contenders with backgrounds in law enforcement are being examined in a new light amid the explosive protests after the death of George Floyd, the African American man who died in Minnesota after an officer pinned him with his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes. . That incident came after the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery by a white man and and his son in Georgia, and a bigoted call to police by a white woman while Christian Cooper tried to spot birds in a New York City park. Other contenders have been forced to fend off embarrassing stories that could stall their chances.
All of the incidents come as the coronavirus had thrust racial and economic disparities to the forefront as Biden weighs his choices — and the ways they might help him address inequality.
The vice presidential vetting process, typically a closely guarded internal affair, is playing out in plain sight, often live and online as Biden remains sheltered at home during a pandemic that’s stalled in-person campaigning. The lead time Biden has given himself — his VP decision isn’t expected for two more months — is bound to further alter the landscape before he ultimately settles on his pick.
“Because of social media and the explosion of information available, the scrutiny has quadrupled from when I was being vetted,” said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who ran for president in 2008. “And what it does is, it makes the selection process that much more difficult for any presidential candidate, because the scrutiny focuses more on the negative than the positive.”
Richardson added, “The main criteria should be for the VP who can step in and become president. And now it may be, who can bring to the ticket less damage.”
Biden, along with campaign aides and outside allies, including elected officials and donors, acknowledge that this year’s search — given his age, his own hints that he likely would serve only a single term, and his No. 2’s ability to shape the direction of the party — has taken on added significance. “It’s more important than I’ve seen it in the last many decades,” Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader and a friend of Biden’s, told POLITICO.
Reid said he expressed as much to Biden in their conversations, including in a recent phone call, and “he didn’t disagree.”
Biden told donors last week that his vetting committee has been working through his shortlist and is deciding who makes the next cut: “Whether or not they really want it. Are they comfortable?” Biden explained. On Thursday, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, one of two Latinas in contention along with Michelle Lujan Grisham, withdrew from consideration for the job.
“Right now, we’re in preliminary stage,” said Reid, who had spoken highly of Cortez Masto.
Klobuchar isn’t the only contender to take heat. At a news conference last week in her pandemic-stricken state of Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had to explain why her husband invoked her to help him get his vessel in the water before the Memorial Day weekend. Then it was Lujan Grisham, governor of New Mexico, defending her purchase of jewelry during widespread business closures.
“This is unprecedented,” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota. “It does seem that this year we’ve seen a more open vetting process, not only by the campaign itself, but by the candidates who are being vetted.”
Former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who has shared with Biden’s campaign a list of her own preferred picks, said she thinks the vice presidential nominee should be a woman of color — and that she would be concerned about picking a senator from a state with a Republican governor.
“Right now, we need to heal. We need a healing person,” Boxer said, stressing that Biden’s personal rapport would be the decisive factor. “I think it should be a woman of color. I think that would be an amazingly exciting and unifying pick.”
Along with Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a former prosecutor and state attorney general, and Rep. Val Demings, a former police chief, the list of black vice presidential contenders includes Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia House Democratic leader who lost a close race for governor in 2018, and Susan Rice, the former Obama administration national security adviser.
In part, the heightened attention on the vice presidential selection process might be a result of the dearth of other movement in the presidential race, with the coronavirus pandemic putting rallies and other events on hold.
“The vice presidential thing, that’s the one thing people can write about and talk about,” said Scott Brennan, a Democratic National Committee member from Iowa.
