By Charles Thompson (PennLive/TNS)
Get ready, Pennsylvanians.
For the first time since former Gov. Ed Rendell was in office, there’s some live and real speculation that your current governor – Josh Shapiro – just might be offered the chance at a new job in Washington D.C.
You can thank the June 27 presidential debate for this.
A fumbling debate performance by President Joe Biden has spawned a ferocious intra-party debate about the electoral viability of the Democrats’ incumbent and presumptive nominee, which senior leaders pleading with Biden to exit the race now have a real shot at winning.
If Biden does withdraw — and some say a decision could come as early as this weekend — the Democrats will suddenly have to fill at least one, and maybe two, positions on their national ticket.
And that’s why the Shapiro watch, 2024 presidential edition, is on.
If a Democratic shakeup occurs, “He (Shapiro) would be one of the top five mentioned in any conversation about any position on any national ticket,” said a cocksure James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant that brought us former President Bill Clinton a generation ago.
The conventional wisdom had always been that Shapiro would take a full look at future political possibilities, to include a presidential run, starting with the 2028 election cycle, when he would be a well-established second-term governor with proven electoral success in a deep purple state.
Now, as top Congressional leaders and other party titans implore Biden to step aside, carefully-laid master plans for Shapiro and a deep bench of other Democratic officeholders are being tossed aside in favor of sudden mid-summer improvisation.
Shapiro, for his part, has refused to publicly discuss his interest in the reshaped Democratic landscape, and he likely won’t say much until Biden makes his final decision. He’s also, when given the chance, never flatly ruled out running.
At a press conference Thursday, PennLive’s Capitol Bureau Chief Jan Murphy asked Shapiro point blank about whether Pennsylvanians’ should worry about losing their governor.
Shapiro steered way around the question.
“Look, I love serving as governor and I’ve made clear where I stand on the presidential race. It’s the president’s decision to make, and he’s made it,” Shapiro said, glossing over the fact that the party’s internal debate is still raging.
Some of his closest confidantes are being just as discreet.
We asked one of Shapiro’s longtime mentors, Philadelphia lawyer William Sasso, about Shapiro’s level of interest in pursuing a freshly-opened spot on a national Democratic ticket later Thursday.
“That’s a question that Josh should answer, and one that I shouldn’t answer for him,” Sasso said.
No worries. There are plenty of others talking..
Most of the speculation on Shapiro flows from this scenario: Biden withdraws from the race and endorses Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor. Then, Harris has to choose a running mate.
This is where a long list of Democratic governors comes in, including, in no particular order, Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
“I think he’s a very logical pick (for Harris) if he was willing to do it,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the national political newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said of Shapiro. “He’s been a popular governor and, of by the way, he’s from arguably the most important of the swing states for the Democrats. That helps.”
Shapiro does check a lot of boxes.
He brings demographic diversity – in several ways – to a national ticket led by Harris, a former California Attorney General and U.S. Senator who is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica.
He’s won a big swing state by large margins, and remains pretty popular judging from the most recent job approval ratings. (Shapiro had a job approval rating of 54 percent in a recent Franklin & Marshall poll, the highest logged by any governor at that point in his term since the tracking poll started in the mid-1990s.)
He tends to play for the middle politically, which could help in an election where the votes of independents and moderate voters are key.
He is – in political terms – youthful, with school-age children.
“The initial advantage he would bring is just the photo,” Carville said Thursday, noting a Harris Shapiro ticket would be about 30 years younger than Biden-Harris. “That visual, after Biden, is going to have real power.”
That relative youth also gives Shapiro this advantage: He doesn’t have to be desperate. At age 51, he’s got several presidential cycles in his future, should he eventually opt to make a national race.
It is not clear, of course, that Biden would endorse anyone as his successor. Political reporter Mark Halperin was reporting Thursday night that, according to his unnamed sources, Biden is considering exiting the race without an endorsement.
That could lead to the first contested nominating convention in decades, with a wide range of possible outcomes including entries from people who would likely never share a ticket with Harris, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom or other aspirants like Biden’s Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
It’s not clear how active Shapiro would be in that chase.
But most pundits right now seem to see his best prospects of going national right now as a vice presidential nominee.
One former national Republican political strategist who asked not to be identified for this story because of a potential conflict with his new job, said he thinks it makes sense for the Democrats to run Harris if Biden steps out, in part because it gives the party the best ability to preserve a lot of the existing campaign infrastructure.
“To start from scratch in August would be an incredible burden,” he said.
Then too, he said, Democratic replacement candidates that have more cache than Harris – Michelle Obama, anyone? – have thus far said they have no interest in running.
If you get to Kamala Harris picking a running mate, then, Shapiro is “not an unrealistic choice,” this consultant said, especially when it comes to giving the party its best chance to keep intact the so-called “Blue Wall” of Rust Belt states this year.
But like most others reached for this story, he doesn’t see Shapiro as a lock, either.
The Democrats could opt to make history and get an extra jolt of energy by putting up America’s first all-female ticket, the consultant noted.
Cue Michigan’s Whitmer, another prominent swing state leader.
Howard Dean, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on CNN Thursday he thinks it would be problematic for the national party to walk away from a woman of color like Harris when female and Black voters are two of the core constituencies the Democratic Party wins national elections with.
But he didn’t name Shapiro as his top VP pick.
“If the president decides not to run, I see Kamala Harris and, I would hope, Roy Cooper, who is… the governor of North Carolina who’s not running again. I think it will be actually easier for us to win North Carolina” then, Dean said.
Even if Shapiro isn’t everyone’s consensus first chose, all of those reached for this story struggled to come up with arguments against putting him on a national ticket.
What we heard most often? That he’s only in his second year in office as governor.
But Carville noted that when you put Shapiro in a race with J.D. Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s vice presidential pick, that argument melts away: Vance, a freshman U.S. Senator from Ohio, is only in his second year in that office.
Shapiro, by contrast, has held a variety of legislative and executive positions over the last 20 years.
Others said Shapiro does not yet have great national name recognition, and he may be a little untested in truly competitive races given the relative ease of his Pennsylvania gubernatorial win over Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano in 2022.
But, they added, everybody else has some weaknesses, too.
The only thing that’s certain right now is that we’ll all know more in a few more days, or at least by the end of the Democratic National Convention next month.
Until then, just try to enjoy the buzz.
Some Shapiro supporters already are.
“I don’t think you can deny that Josh Shapiro is the right person in the right place at the right time, and I think that’s always been Josh’s destiny,” said Larry Ceisler, a former Democratic strategist who now runs a public relations firm in Philadelphia.
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Source: Berkshire mont