Some activists criticize Shapiro and Kelly as potential vice presidential candidates
WASHINGTON — Democrats united with remarkable speed behind the vice president Kamala Harris as she took over at the top of the party ticket heading towards the November presidential election.
It may be a different story when it comes to a running mate.
As Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro and the senator from Arizona. Mark Kelly Although they have emerged as potential finalists, both have faced criticism from some organizations and activists who might otherwise support Democratic causes, potentially undermining the party’s newfound unity just two weeks after Harris entered the race.
Vice President’s Team Says They Are Interviewing six possible choices over the weekend before a scheduled announcement Monday. The next day, she and her running mate will appear together at a rally in Philadelphia, then visit six other key states.
In addition to Shapiro and Kelly, Harris is reportedly considering the Minnesota governorship. Tim WalzGovernor of Illinois JB Pritzker and the governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
Walz has changed his travel plans for the weekend, but his office did not respond to a question Saturday about whether it was an interview with Harris. “The governor’s schedule has changed, and he will no longer be traveling to New Hampshire this weekend,” Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann said.
Some congressional Democrats have promoted Kelly, a former Navy pilot and astronaut whose state shares a 400-mile border with Mexico, because they believe his selection could help defuse attacks from the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Donald Trumpwho argues that the Biden administration’s immigration policies are too lax.
Shapiro also has high-profile supporters, including Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker. She caused a stir Friday when she released a video showing several Philadelphia-area officials and Democrats promoting Harris but also highlighting Shapiro as her running mate, suggesting the mayor had insider knowledge of Harris’ decision.
But a person familiar with the mayor’s thinking said the video was simply an example of Parker’s support for Harris and the possibility that Shapiro, Parker’s friend, could be chosen as vice president. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Kelly and Shapiro have also seen their critics grow more vocal as Harris moves closer to a decision.
While that may not be enough to convince Harris, it does indicate that the vice president’s honeymoon period, in which the various wings of the Democratic Party coalesced behind her, may be ending in the two weeks since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed her.
Some labor groups criticized Kelly, saying he opposed a bill they said would promote unionization. The senator’s office countered that while he did not co-sponsor the bill, he said he would vote for it on the floor.
Shawn Fain, president of the U.S. Auto Workers Union, said that despite its support for Harris for president, his 370,000-member union is not backing Kelly as a potential vice presidential candidate. Fain also said the union is not supportive of Shapiro, who has already signaled a willingness to join Republicans in calling for expanding voucher programs that provide public funding to private schools.
Fain also congratulated Beshear, Walz and Pritzker.
“She probably has a thousand people telling her the same thing, you know, what they think,” Fain said in an interview. “And so she has to make the decision based on what she thinks is best for her.”
The Institute for Middle East Understanding, a nonprofit organization, spoke out publicly, saying in a statement that Shapiro “is not the right candidate for this position, and selecting him would be a step in the wrong direction.”
Shapiro, who said he plans to attend Harris’ rally Tuesday in Philadelphia, has aggressively confronted what he sees as anti-Semitism coming from pro-Palestinian protests and professed solidarity with Israel in its push to eliminate Hamas as it battles militants in Gaza.
Shapiro criticized universities for failing to act quickly to combat anti-Semitism and became a prominent critic of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill. She resigned after having testified at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say, after repeated questioning, that on-campus calls for genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.
Shapiro also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while suggesting that any end to the war between Israel and Hamas requires Hamas’ removal from power.
The governor was criticized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for not condemning Israel for the massacre of civilians in Gaza and for not calling on Israel to stop fighting in the territory. Shapiro countered that he had met with Muslim Americans and understood their pain.
The progressive activist organization RootsAction.org opposes Shapiro’s positions on Israel, vouchers and the environment, among other issues. It says that by including Shapiro, Harris “has set off alarm bells among young people, racial justice activists, Arab Americans, Muslims and others whose votes and campaign activism were crucial to defeating Trump four years ago.”
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer resurfaced an opinion piece Shapiro wrote in 1993, when he was a 20-year-old student at the University of Rochester, in which he argued that peace would “never come” to the Middle East and that the Palestinians were “too belligerent” to coexist with Israel.
Asked about this, Shapiro replied: “I was 20 years old,” adding that he had long supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I hope we can see a day when there is peace in the Middle East,” he said.
Some environmental leaders and residents of the rural town of Shapiro also oppose him. Dimock, Pennsylvania. They wrote a letter to Harris, urging her not to choose Shapiro and accusing the governor of failing to deliver on promises to clean up groundwater contaminated by natural gas production through hydraulic fracturing.
___
Associated Press journalists Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, and AP automotive writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.
