Kamala Harris will announce her running mate for the US presidential election against Donald Trump and JD Vance “in the next six, seven days”, an influential Democratic campaign co-chair said.
“I would imagine we’ll know who her running mate is, and we’ll get ready for the convention,” Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, told CBS on Monday, referring to Democrats’ national gathering in Chicago next month.
Whitmer also said she was not under consideration herself.
“I have communicated with everyone, including the people of Michigan, that I’m going to stay as governor until the end of my term at the end of 2026,” Whitmer said.
Harris is widely reported to have narrowed her field of possible picks to three – all white men from states expected to play key roles in the November election. On Sunday, a new poll said the navy pilot and astronaut turned Arizona senator Mark Kelly was seen most favourably by voters.
According to ABC News and Ipsos, 22% of respondents saw Kelly in a favourable light against 12% who did not, giving him a net favourability of +10.
The two other men widely reported to be in the final reckoning are the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, and Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania. In the ABC/Ipsos poll, Walz scored -1 for favourability, Shapiro +4.
Strikingly, Kelly’s favourability rating was a striking 25 points better than that of Vance, the Ohio senator whose first steps in support of Trump have been beset by controversy and Democratic attacks, leading to reports of doubts among senior Republicans.
Under fire for misogynistic comments including disparaging leading Democrats as “childless cat ladies”, and widely shown to have said he despised Trump before changing his tune, Vance’s favourability rating in the ABC/Ipsos poll was -15, a poor score surpassed only by Trump himself, at -16.
Lest Kelly supporters get too confident, the ABC/Ipsos poll also noted that he and most other potential Democratic picks “remain unknown to large sections of the American public”. Among all possible Democratic nominees for vice-president, the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg (+4 favourability), and the governor of California, Gavin Newsom (-12), were the best-known to voters.
Harris was seen favourably by 43% of voters and unfavourably by 42%. Among possible picks who might help boost that rating, Kelly represents a border state, central to the fight over immigration, and is married to Gabby Giffords, a former congresswoman who survived a shooting and campaigns for gun control reform.
Shapiro governs a rust belt state that proved pivotal in 2016, when Trump won it, and in 2020, when it went for Joe Biden.
Walz’s state, Minnesota, has voted for the Democrat in every presidential election since 1976 but Trump has targeted it this year, trumpeting polling gains before Biden dropped out of the race.
Biden, 81, withdrew from his re-election campaign amid polling that showed most Americans thought him too old to be president. That means that, at 78, Trump is now the oldest candidate ever to run for the White House.
Whitmer told CBS she expected a “convention of happy warriors” in Chicago. Harris advisers are reportedly placing emphasis on potential running mates’ ability to take the fight to Vance, who they want to portray as too inexperienced to step up should Trump fail to serve a full term.
Now 39, Vance was a US marine, a bestselling author and a venture capitalist before winning a US Senate seat in 2022.
On Monday, Mitch Landrieu, a Harris campaign co-chair, called Vance “one of the most unprepared people … ever put up to hold the vice-presidency of the United States”.
Landrieu told CNN: “He’s never run anything. And he’s about to be one heartbeat away from the largest entity in the world, and the one that’s the most important.
“So it’s a fair question to ask: ‘How would we know whether you have the capability to run domestic and national security policy for the most powerful country in the world, which you may be called to do on a moment’s notice?’”
Kelly, 60, was elected to the Senate in 2020. Walz, 60 and a former teacher and national guard sergeant, was a US congressman for six terms from 2006 before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018. Shapiro, 51, sat in the Pennsylvania state house before becoming state attorney general in 2017, then governor in 2023.
CNN quoted “a Harris adviser” as saying the running-mate selection process would be informed by Harris’s own experience.
Now 59, Harris was a former California attorney general and US senator when she was picked by Biden in 2020. Her four years as vice-president have generated reports of struggles but also effective displays on key campaign issues, particularly threats to abortion rights.
“She knows the challenges of this world in a way that you have to have somebody who has a deep amount of resilience,” the unnamed adviser told CNN.
A campaign spokesperson, James Singer, told the same network Harris would “select a vice-president who is qualified and ready to serve the American people, protect their freedoms, and fight for their future”.
All three men reportedly under closest consideration have chosen their words with care.
“This is not about me,” Kelly told reporters. “But always, always when I’ve had the chance to serve, I think that’s very important to do.”
Walz said: “Being mentioned is certainly an honour. I trust Vice-President Harris’s judgment … I would do what is in the best interests of the country.”
Shapiro said Harris would “make that decision when she is ready, and I have all the confidence in the world that she will make that decision, along with many others, in the best interests of the Amercian people”.
