‘Ninety-Nine Problems, And My VP Can’t Be One’: Kamala Unloads On Why She Jilted Josh Shapiro

Former Vice President Kamala Harris said that she passed on selecting Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro for her 2024 ticket due to his “unrealistic expectations” for being a running mate, according to her newly released book “107 Days.”

Harris wrote she picked her running mate from three finalists — Shapiro, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly — and interviewed them one-by-one at her official vice-presidential residence, the Naval Observatory, on Aug. 4, 2024 — two days before she announced her selection of Walz. Shapiro was the first of the three which Harris interviewed, according to her book.

“At one point, he mused that he would want to be in the room for every decision,” Kamala wrote in her book, describing her interview with the Pennsylvania governor. “I told him bluntly that was an unrealistic expectation. A vice president is not a copresident. I had a nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership. I had to be able to completely trust the person in that role.”

“‘Every day as president,’ I said, ‘I’ll have ninety-nine problems, and my VP can’t be one,’” Harris added.

Harris suggested that when Shapiro was being picked up to be driven to the interview by Storm Horncastle, Harris’ residence manager, the governor was “disappointed” that the Harris team did not want him to be seen by reporters.

“Storm had picked him up from the parking lot of an elementary school in Glover Park. At the last minute, Storm had traded her Jeep for a vehicle with tinted windows, since discretion in this process was so important to us. Josh went to get in the front seat, but Storm instructed that he needed to be in the back, so he could duck and not been seen,” Harris wrote in her book. “She thought he seemed a little disappointed by that. When he learned she was the residence manager, he peppered her with questions about the house, from the number of bedrooms to how he might arrange to get Pennsylvania artists’ work on loan from the Smithsonian.”