Every Harris VP Possibility Has Real Risk—Except for One

Back when an open convention was the preferred choice of many who wanted President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was a top-tier name floated as a possible replacement. The second-term governor’s star has risen meteorically since her 2022 reelection brought Democratic majorities into the state Legislature for the first time in more than a decade. And she is, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Vice President Kamala Harris’ best choice as a running mate. The idea that Americans wouldn’t vote for two women is based on zero evidence whatsoever. More importantly, Whitmer is the only rumored vice presidential candidate without any meaningful downside.

Since the Democratic Party united almost instantaneously around Harris following Biden’s abrupt decision to exit the race on Sunday, however, the Whitmer talk has faded into the background. The almost impermeable consensus was that Harris needed a white man as her running mate, preferably from a swing state. As one X user memorably quipped, Harris’ running mate “will be radioactively caucasian. the human equivalent of salmon shorts smeared with mayonnaise.” What Harris needs, this thinking goes, is a near-total opposite.

This reading of the politics of the moment is grounded in a misunderstanding of recent American history. Because one woman was defeated in a general election—Hillary Clinton in 2016—many people have concluded that any woman would do worse than a similarly positioned man. In Democratic circles, this isn’t even subtext. Even Black Democrats are worried that, because Harris is not just a woman but a Black woman, the balance the ticket needs is a white man—especially given that as the race gets underway in earnest, Harris may in fact still be running slightly behind Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.

But it strains credibility on a basic level to assume that Americans would vote for one but not two women. And the idea that women are somehow uniquely badly positioned to win the presidency is difficult to sustain. For one thing, Clinton won 2.7 million more votes nationally than Trump, just in the “wrong” places, according to our nonsensical electoral system. She also bested several men in the Democratic primaries and caucuses that year.

And you don’t have to look very far back in history to see a woman of color doing not only just fine in public opinion polling but much better than her male rivals. That would be former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was absolutely mopping the floor with Biden in head-to-head opinion polls before she dropped out of the race, leading him by an average of 4.4 points as of March 5. Are we to believe that choosing another woman as her running mate, like Alabama Sen. Katie Britt or Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, would have torpedoed Haley’s chances against Biden? I think not.

In selecting a running mate, nominees should solve for real weaknesses, not myths. And Whitmer solves multiple problems at once without any of the downside risk of the men who are being floated as top picks. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would rankle teachers unions, and his stance as a vocal critic of campus Gaza protests threatens to kill the real momentum Harris has with younger voters who were ready to sit out the election with Biden in the race or to defect to a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The sexual-harassment scandal in Shapiro’s office that was settled in October of last year is also not a great look. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly would cause trouble with organized labor for not endorsing the PRO Act—a position he walked back Wednesday—and needlessly opens up a competitive Senate seat in 2026.

At least those two would be likely to help in a crucial swing state. But that’s certainly not the case for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who hails from Indiana), or Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. These are all landslide states one way or another that would not be in play no matter who is on either ticket. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is 67, and though he might put his state in play for Democrats, the last thing Democrats need is to elevate another elderly man to the doorstep of the presidency given what has just transpired.

Whitmer has implied that she is not interested in joining the ticket. But in politics, such desires shift quickly with opportunity. Whitmer and Whitmer alone would bring near-certainty to the crucial swing state of Michigan, lacks any obvious policy positions or statements that would alienate crucial Democratic coalition subgroups, and at 52 is young enough to be seen as a potential successor to Harris. She is a dynamic public speaker; has achieved a number of long-sought Democratic goals in the state during her six years in office, including repealing Michigan’s anti-union “right-to-work” law; and has demonstrated her crossover appeal to Republicans by running a successful reelection campaign in a tough environment for national Democrats, including winning 9 percent of Republican women in 2022. According to Morning Consult polling, she has a much higher net approval rating than most other governors mentioned as veep contenders, including Pritzker, Cooper, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Only Shapiro and Beshear have better net approval.

Although there is no ironclad consensus about this in political science, the balance of the evidence suggests that women are hurt more than men by perceptions of their electability, which results in fewer women running for office and in women more often losing to men in primary elections. That certainly seems to have been the dynamic that led Democratic primary voters to choose Joe Biden over a number of his rivals in 2020, including Harris, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Harris, having been on the wrong end of this gendered perception once already, shouldn’t lean into it now by failing to give Whitmer the same consideration as her riskier and less compelling male rivals.