WASHINGTON _ Kamala Harris is making a hard push on television. Amy Klobuchar is pitching herself as a voting rights champion. And Stacey Abrams is openly campaigning for the job.
As the Democratic Party closes rank around its presumed presidential nominee, an entirely new race is taking shape: the one to become Joe Biden's running mate.
After wrapping up the primary earlier than expected, Biden has been holding high-level conversations with aides about his vice presidential options, and has taken the unorthodox step of publicly stating that he will select from a list of six to 10 women. He's planning to empower a committee to formally begin the vetting process sometime this month.
Much of the quadrennial ritual known as the "veepstakes" usually occurs behind the scenes. But during a coronavirus pandemic that has halted traditional campaigning and limited face-to-face meetings, the public effort has taken on even greater importance for the contenders.
"If you think you're one of those people, you're putting on a full-court press with Biden advisers and things you're saying in public," said Harrison Hickman, a Democratic pollster involved in vice presidential vetting during the 2004 and 2000 cycles. "You're probably writing an op-ed, you're doing interviews on cable television. ... You're trying to do things to impress the person."
Harris, who most Democrats see at the top of Biden's VP list, has been on an aggressive media tour during the past two weeks, hitting CNN, MSNBC, "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and "The View." The California senator has also participated in a virtual town hall with Donna Brazile on Howard University's TV station and taped a message for an online coronavirus town hall hosted by Diddy.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's national profile is on the rise thanks in large part to President Donald Trump's attacks over her response to the coronavirus. After Trump derided her as "the woman from Michigan," the first-term Democrat went on "The Daily Show" wearing the attempted insult as a badge of honor on a T-shirt.
Whitmer even made an appearance on Biden's recently launched podcast, "Here's the Deal."
"I didn't go out looking for the national spotlight," Whitmer said during a podcast with The Atlantic, one of several national print and TV outlets she has granted lengthy interviews in the aftermath of her back-and-forth with the president.
On Wednesday morning, Whitmer appeared on the "Today" show, and this week she was the lead writer on a letter from a dozen governors requesting that the Trump administration hold a special open enrollment period for Obamacare insurance.
In the weeks since Biden effectively wrapped up the nomination, Klobuchar has positioned herself as a leading proponent for voting by mail nationwide, most recently tweaking Trump in a New York Times op-ed for voting absentee in 2018. An adviser said she has three virtual fundraisers scheduled on behalf of the Biden campaign in the coming weeks.
And Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, is unconventionally unapologetic about her teeming ambition for the No. 2 slot.
"I would be an excellent running mate," she declared to Melissa Harris-Perry in a feature for Elle magazine. "If I am selected, I am prepared and excited to serve."
Elizabeth Warren isn't playing coy either, telling MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that she would be Biden's running mate if asked.
With his final rival, Bernie Sanders, dropping out of the 2020 race last week and endorsing him soon after, Biden is getting an earlier start on the process than recent Democratic nominees, who were still contesting a nomination fight at this point in the calendar.
But the pandemic that has shut most of the country down is bound to complicate a delicate process that normally relies on face-to-face meetings to establish a potential ticket's rapport and chemistry.
"I don't think you can do that well over video conference, but in this day and age and with Joe, I don't know if they want a lot of people coming in on a plane and sitting down with Joe Biden right now. It definitely will make it harder," said a Democratic aide who was intimately involved in a previous vice presidential vetting process. "Some of this is just about the relationship, can you trust this person, does this person have your back? I don't know how you do that. I think you're at a disadvantage. This process will be different."
Harris enters the competition with several advantages. At 55, she's more than two decades younger than the 77-year-old Biden, who many Democrats believe needs to consider age in his calculation. As a first-term senator, she's new enough to the national scene to demonstrate a future-looking vision, but also has experienced the rigors and pressure of a presidential contest.
Perhaps most importantly, she's an African American woman, representing the constituency most crucial to not just Biden's electoral success, but to the Democratic Party's at large. If Biden chooses a white woman, he is likely to incur backlash about a lack of ethnic diversity.
"Biden putting a black woman on the ticket rewards all women," said Christine Pelosi, a Democratic National Committee member from California and daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Biden putting a white woman on the ticket doesn't necessarily reward black women. If white women don't want this black woman, they were not going to vote for Biden anyway."
Harris was the first former 2020 rival to hold a virtual fundraiser with Biden, a typical rite of passage for potential running mates. Hickman recalls that after John Edwards dropped out of the race in 2004, he held an event at a Washington hotel for about 300 of his top contributors. He invited John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, to attend.
"That was a campaign rally for John Edwards to be vice president," Hickman recalls. "And Kerry wanted his contributors."
During last week's event, Biden went out of his way to forge a partnership with Harris going forward. "The biggest thing we can do is make Donald Trump a one-term president, so I'm coming for you, kid," he told her.
History suggests it's also beneficial she's a senator. Statistically, most running mates have come out of Congress' upper chamber, with all but three Democratic choices since 1940 being senators.
But the vetting process will be the ultimate threshold any political partner has to pass: Do no harm.
Hillary Clinton, who began her vice presidential process in May of 2016, used an initial document with more than 100 questions that probed candidates about everything from their birthplace hospital to mid-life health issues to details in legislation they've proposed.
Thousands of documents _ from taxes to old campaign paraphernalia to news articles to speeches _ will be requested. Confidentiality will be demanded, meaning that top aides will have to ensure that any meetings and calls around the vice presidency be kept off the official schedule, unbeknownst to even key staff. Leaks can be automatically disqualifying. And every public appearance must be calibrated with the ultimate goal in mind.
Unforeseen events can recalibrate the skills most imperative in a governing partner. The state-by-state battle to combat the coronavirus has lifted governors into the limelight and pushed members of Congress to the sidelines.
This is why the 48-year-old Whitmer is being seen as a compelling late-breaking option. While national progressives contacted by McClatchy struggled to define her profile, she is popular with left-leaning activists in the Midwest.
"She's a good politician. She's an adaptive politician ... i.e., someone like Biden who can be very centrist if that's where the energy is, but if the energy goes to activists she can move there," said John Nichols, a Madison, Wis.-based progressive writer for The Nation.
"The challenge is that she is someone a lot like Biden ideologically," he added. "She is more someone who you would see as a likely Biden supporter. It would be a case of Biden picking someone from his camp, who happens to be a high-profile governor from an important state."
