Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce her running mate next week. She is reportedly considering several governors who could theoretically appeal to moderate voters in swing states: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are also among them.
From a liberal perspective, it’s not as clear-cut as it is from the Republican side, where North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is clearly better than the others. (Unfortunately, former President Donald Trump chose Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, whose distinguishing characteristic is his disdain for liberal economic policies.) Still, it is possible to parse them.
The first is national data. Unlike other names on the list, Buttigieg is actually a member of the current administration and has been responsible for implementing federal policy. Unfortunately, his tenure as transport secretary will not be considered particularly liberal. Although he has expressed a willingness to dismantle bureaucratic “barriers” in the wake of transportation-related disasters, he has not made any serious attempts to address said bureaucratic problems. Instead, he reserved much of his anger for private companies like Southwest and Norfolk Southern when things went wrong, rather than the outdated and officious regulators who made their jobs harder.
Buttigieg comes across as a technocrat rather than a progressive: He seems to believe that smart, capable people like himself should run government and be more efficient. When he ran for president in 2020, liberal news sites Walkers Describing him as a “product of meritocracy” is not meant as a compliment. He pisses off the left, but that doesn’t make him a friend of freedom, interesting though it is. His foreign policy views also appear to be more hawkish than those of other standard Democrats, which is not progressive.
Then there’s Kelly. As an astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) — who was critically injured after being shot in the head by a deranged gunman — he’s certainly a Inspiring people. However, his political positions are mostly aligned with his party. He voted for policies approved by President Biden 95.5% of the time. On energy and environmental issues, he departed from the progressive wing of his party: He opposed the Green New Deal and voted for increased oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. On the other hand, he is one of the most outspoken Democrats on gun control.
Arizona’s U.S. senators tend to be more individual-minded, bipartisan and independent: see Kyrsten Sinema. For these reasons, Kelly may slightly Better than some other options.
Now it’s the governors’ turn. Both Walz and Beshear were elected in 2018 and therefore have longer records than Shapiro, who became the state’s governor just last year. Alas, their terms were not particularly inspiring, as both of them overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic—providing an opportunity to implement policies that would be anathema to freedoms.
Like other blue-state governors, Walz has implemented many of the same strict, freedom-infringing mitigation policies; he has also launched a government hotline for people to call to report neighbors violating social distancing rules. When Republicans complained about this, he responded, “We’re not taking down phone numbers that people can call to make sure their families are safe.” That alone should be disqualifying.
Beshear, for his part, has tried to continue measures such as lockdowns, mask mandates and school closures during the pandemic. In fact, he reinstated a mask requirement for public school students in August 2021, saying, “We have reached the point where we cannot allow our children to go into these buildings unprotected, unvaccinated and face this Delta variant to the point. This is also disqualifying.
It’s good that Walz and Beshear support legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, marijuana. But it’s hard not to put the whole wrestling mask-on-a-five-year-old thing behind you. The best thing to say about them is that they are not Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Fortunately, Shapiro has spent less time in office doing things that offend liberals. To his credit, he supported several encouraging measures. One of his first actions after taking office was to eliminate the college degree requirement for government jobs. He also made some small progress in reforming the state’s occupational licensing system. To some extent, he is a proponent of school choice. However, he ultimately vetoed the voucher bill after facing intense pressure from the teachers union.
Considering his popularity in Pennsylvania— must-Harris’ win – Shapiro has emerged as the most likely vice presidential pick in recent days. Like Buttigieg, Shapiro seems to deeply unsettle the far left: new republic Calling him “a vice-presidential pick who could undermine democratic unity.” While that may sound funny, the main knock against him from the left is that he harshly condemned recent pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and vocally supported Israel. For liberals who want to see America become less Engaging in the Middle East and stopping spending U.S. tax dollars on costly foreign wars are legitimate concerns.
At the same time, it’s hard to imagine Vice President Shapiro taking a radically different course on foreign policy than the alternatives; on most other issues, he’s slightly better off. All of this leads to weak –Very Weak – Liberal preference for Shapiro.
