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 [Shapiro] 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.”
“Apart from apprehensions for myself, I was also concerned for him,” Harris added. “I thought his frustrations with the job might impact his performance in the role.”
After the interview, Horncastle instructed the state trooper arranging Shapiro’s transport to avoid driving their Pennsylvania license plated cars in front of the vice president’s private residence, according to Harris’ book. However, Shapiro did not seem to heed the warning, as those very same plated cars were seen driving past the Naval Observatory on CNN ten minutes later, Harris described.
Walz and Kelly, unlike Shapiro, had no problems with what Harris called her team’s “cloak and dagger shenanigans” to evade the press.
Walz, whose rendezvous point was at a dog park, is said to have been “amused” by the team’s antics. Harris claims that her eventual running mate had “an appealing authenticity” in his interview, and was “genuinely self-deprecating.”
Kelly, who Harris wrote “would be magnetic” as a running mate, assigned himself a rendezvous point near a dumpster, where he awaited his escort from inside a Tesla.
Later that same day, Harris chose Walz as her running mate following the support of the majority of her senior staff and her 17-year old godson. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, had thrown his weight behind Shapiro since he had known him longer, Harris indicated in her book.
In a Sept. 17 episode of Stephen A. Smith‘s podcast, Smith asked Shapiro about Harris’ book and her lack of acknowledgement of former President Joe Biden’s mental state. Although Shapiro said he had not yet read 107 Days, he said, “She’s [Harris is’ going to have to answer to how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly,” with regards to Biden.
Harris and Shapiro did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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