WASHINGTON — Deputy Director Kamala Harris will introduce her new running mate at a rally tuesday night in philadelphia — but with the event just hours away, her choice remains a mystery.
In recent days, she has set her sights on three potential finalists: the governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapirosenator from Arizona. Mark Kelly and the governor of Minnesota. Tim Walzbut further decisions have not yet been made public.
Harris’ campaign team planned to make the announcement via video message before the rally, according to a person involved in the planning who asked not to be named, but the exact timing is unclear.
This would be similar to how the then candidate Joe Biden revealed Harris as his choice for vice president during the pandemic-ravaged 2020 presidential election.
It will be another milestone in the barely two weeks since the vice president took over the Democratic ticket for the November election. Since then, she has been busy building a campaign and breathing new life into the Democratic race against the Republicans. Donald Trump.
Harris, second lord Doug Emhoff and her No. 2 pick will appear together for an evening rally in Philadelphia, commemorating a 2020 joint appearance by Biden and Harris in Wilmington, Delaware. Likewise, in 2016, newly elected running mate Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia appeared with Hillary Clinton in Miami.
After Tuesday’s day trip to Pennsylvania, Harris and her running mate will spend the next five days flying thousands of miles across the country, visiting key battleground states. They will visit Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Detroit on Wednesday. But a planned stop in Savannah, Georgia, was postponed due to Tropical Storm Debby The storm’s effects and associated rainfall could also derail a planned stop in Durham, North Carolina.
Later in the week, Harris and her No. 2 will head to Phoenix and Las Vegas.
That the schedule was set before her running mate was known is reminiscent of a cliffhanger-like scenario Trump created by delaying his choice of a vice presidential nominee. Senator JD Vance of Ohio, until last month Republican National Convention was going on in Milwaukee.
Vance, meanwhile, is trying to disrupt Harris’s pick’s premiere on Tuesday. He had planned to arrive in Philadelphia on the Democratic ticket and deliver his own speech at noon as counterprogramming.
The senator subsequently announced he would shadow Harris and her running mate with his own events in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina. It was unclear how the weather would affect his southern swing.
In announcing Vance’s trips, the Trump campaign blamed Harris and Democratic policies for a host of problems, saying that “prices are skyrocketing, the cost of living is skyrocketing, illegal immigrants are flooding into our country, and crime is rampant. The stock market is crashing because of Kamala Harris’s weak, failed, and dangerously liberal policies.”
Harris’ campaign, on the other hand, welcomed the overlapping destinations.
“We are pleased that J.D. Vance is providing voters in crucial states with exactly the split screen that will determine their choice in November,” said Charles Lutvak, a Harris campaign spokesman.
The vice president’s campaign says it has invited religious leaders, labor union members and state and local elected officials to participate in upcoming events. Harris and her running mate plan to march in a variety of venues, from large arenas to college campuses. The trip will also allow them to see voters in smaller settings such as union halls, family restaurants and campaign offices.
At a fundraising event in Minneapolis Monday night, Walz said Trump has stolen America’s joy and curtailed freedoms.
“It wasn’t an insult to call these guys weird,” Walz said of the label he’s slapped on the GOP ticket in recent days. “It was an observation.”
It is a characterization that has since been widely imitated in Democratic circles.
If Harris chooses Shapiro, who hails from the Philadelphia suburbs, Tuesday’s event with her would be a homecoming of sorts.
Shapiro’s consideration has signed criticism from some Arab Americans and activist groups who are wary of his outspoken solidarity with Israel in his quest to eliminate Hamas during the war in GazaBut Shapiro enjoys high approval ratings in Pennsylvania — one of Democrats’ crucial “blue wall” states, along with Michigan and Wisconsin — that Harris wants to shore up before November.
During a “Progressives for Harris” organizing talk Monday night, which organizers said drew tens of thousands of attendees, speakers repeatedly ridiculed the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “authoritarian” who needlessly targeted and killed civilians in Gaza.
Some delegates to the Democratic National Convention That ” uncommitted “rather than Biden over his administration’s support for Israel, they also suggested they weren’t ready to back Harris until they knew more about her policies, including whether she would push more diligently for a ceasefire in the fighting in Gaza.
However, participants in the conversation limited themselves to criticizing Harris’ potential running mates, focusing instead on Trump.
“Trump and J.D. Vance are promising more tax cuts for the mega-millionaires and billionaires,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “This election is our chance to tax the rich and make the rich pay their fair share.”
As for Kelly, some congressional Democrats have promoted the former astronaut, whose state borders Mexico by more than 370 miles (600 kilometers). They say his selection could counter Trump’s arguments that the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies are too lenient — though some labor leaders have suggested the senator is not as friendly to organized labor as they would like.