Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly met privately with a shortlist of potential running mates for her presidential campaign.
Harris’ decision on her running mate is expected to happen today.
One of the expected frontrunners is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who has emerged as one of Harris’ favorites in the past couple of weeks.
However, at the eleventh hour, reports are now surfacing that top Democrat, and fellow Pennsylvanian, Sen. John Fetterman is leading an internal charge to convince Harris not to select Shapiro as her running mate.
Shapiro is one of several running-mate candidates, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who have met with Harris’ team.
According to a report from Politico, Fetterman is concerned about the possibility that Harris might choose his state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate, and his advisers have privately relayed those worries to Harris’ team, according to three people familiar with the conversations.
According to the report, Fetterman’s advisers suggested to Harris’ team that the senator believes that Shapiro is excessively focused on his own personal ambitions. His reservations about Shapiro reflect a long-running rivalry between the two ambitious Democrats, who have risen on parallel tracks in a politically crucial state.
The Politico report also stated that much of the consternation between Fetterman and Shapiro is the direct result of the key disagreements the men had was while they served together on Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons, according to the three people, who were granted anonymity to describe internal conversations.
Fetterman sought to revitalize the institution and provide second chances to some convicts. Shapiro often took a less lenient position, arguing that he believed in criminal justice reform but that the commutations process was not the place for “structural” changes.
Fetterman and Shapiro clashed in particular over the fate of Lee and Dennis Horton, brothers who had been convicted in a fatal shooting and robbery in 1993 but maintained their innocence for decades.
The rivalry between Fetterman and Shapiro dates back several years, when Fetterman was the lieutenant governor and widely viewed as a rising star on the left. Shapiro was an up-and-coming attorney. Both men were known to have higher offices in their sights, according to the report.
The report also stated Fetterman’s advisers offered his “unvarnished assessment” of Shapiro “that is not about policy differences or other public baggage.”
A variety of stories have recently come to the surface regarding Shapiro over the past few days, including one about making a settlement over sexual harassment accusations against one of his aides.
Per a Red State report, there are reports that progressive Democrats aren’t happy with Shapiro because of his position in regard to Israel and Gaza — stemming from him being an IDF volunteer and from an article he wrote in college.
According to Fox News, in the 1993 article, Shapiro wrote that “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully,” because “they do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States.”
A Fetterman spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The Harris campaign also declined to comment on the conversations and only pointed to a past statement that “Vice President Harris has directed her team to begin the process of vetting potential running mates” and that “process has begun in earnest and we do not expect to have additional updates until the Vice President announces who will be serving as her running mate.”