When, just over a week ago, President Joe Biden announced that he was ending his 2024 reelection campaign, the Democrats’ path to the White House in November suddenly seemed a lot less straightforward. Yet a promising successor quickly emerged in Vice President Kamala Harris, who, just a day later, secured the backing of enough delegates to technically win her party’s presidential nomination.
Now, an important question remains: Who might Harris pick as her running mate? The list of contenders has rapidly changed shape over the last seven days, with the likes of Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina’s Roy Cooper coming and going. (While Governor Whitmer has opted to co-chair Harris’s presidential campaign instead, Governor Cooper formally dropped out of the running for the VP slot on Monday, July 29, saying in a statement, “I strongly support Vice President Harris’ campaign for President. I know she’s going to win and I was honored to be considered for this role. This just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket.”)
Below, find everything you need to know about the remaining could-be candidates: United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Michigan senator Gary Peters, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Arizona senator Mark Kelly, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro.
Pete Buttigieg
Buttigieg—the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who memorably ran for president in 2020—has remained a fixture in national politics since becoming the secretary of transportation under Biden in 2021. A vocal supporter of Harris’s campaign, he has been relentless in his press appearances over the last week, denouncing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump; Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance; and the Republican agenda more generally on MSNBC, Fox News, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and beyond. “What you’re seeing on display here is Pete reminding everyone that he is one of the best communicators in the Democratic Party,” one Democratic strategist told The Hill.
Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten (a teacher and activist), share twins.
Gary Peters
A recent report from Axios positioned Senator Peters as a “dark horse” in the VP conversation, with labor leaders urging Harris’s campaign to bear him in mind. Hailing from Michigan, a crucial swing state, Peters was the only nonincumbent Democrat to win a Senate seat in 2014. He was also named chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2022 and 2024 election cycles. In 2020, Peters, who supports a woman’s right to choose, made headlines for sharing the story behind his wife’s abortion in the 1980s. A gun owner, he was also one of 40 senators to introduce the Background Check Expansion Act in 2019.
Before beginning his political career, Peters served in the United States Navy Reserve for 10 years and worked in finance for two decades.
Peters and his wife, Colleen, share three children.
Tim Walz
Before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018, Walz represented the state’s 1st Congressional District and—before that—served in the Army National Guard for 24 years. (He is also a former educator.) As governor, Walz has a strikingly progressive record, having overseen, among other things, the legalization of recreational marijuana in Minnesota, the implementation of universal background checks, and the protection of gender-affirming services and care throughout the state.
Kelly and his wife, Gwen, share two children.
Mark Kelly
Kelly has served as the junior US senator from Arizona since 2020. Prior to that, his career included several combat missions during the Gulf War, along with space missions as an astronaut with NASA. As a politician, the causes he’s championed include abortion rights, protection of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and gun control, the latter of which took on painful resonance in Kelly’s personal life after his wife, former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in an assassination attempt in Tucson in January 2011. Since the shooting, Kelly and Giffords have devoted much of their time to the fight for increased gun control in the US, cofounding the Giffords advocacy and research group in 2013.
Kelly shares two adult daughters, Claire and Claudia, with his first wife, Amelia.
Andy Beshear
Beshear was elected governor of Kentucky in 2019, following in the footsteps of his father, Steve, the governor from 2007 to 2015. Holding a degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, Beshear drew criticism early in his legal career for representing the developers of Kentucky’s controversial Bluegrass Pipeline. Later on, however, as Kentucky’s attorney general, he developed a reputation for filing lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies for their role in the state’s opioid epidemic. During his tenure as governor, Beshear has prioritized rural abortion access, voting rights for Black Americans, and increased pay for teachers.
Beshear and his wife, social worker Britainy Beshear, have a son and a daughter.
Josh Shapiro
Shapiro, the current governor of Pennsylvania, began his political career on Capitol Hill, successively working for former Michigan senator Carl Levin, former representative Peter Deutsch of Florida, former New Jersey senator Robert Torricelli, and former representative Joe Hoeffel of Pennsylvania. In 2004, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he would remain until 2012. As a state representative, he backed Barack Obama’s presidential bid as early as 2007, when Hillary Clinton was still the prominent favorite for the Democratic nomination. Later, as attorney general of Pennsylvania, his achievements included leading a two-year grand jury investigation into the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests in Pennsylvania.
Shapiro married his high school sweetheart, Lori, in 1997. They share four children.
