What’s more exciting than a veepstakes? A surprise veepstakes

Over three chaotic weeks, America lived through an assassination attempt, a political convention and a dramatic exit from the presidential ticket. But even — or perhaps especially — in these wild times, the political world is clinging to what it knows: lists of names and wild speculation.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris has officially been a presidential candidate for less than four days, the parlor game over her running mate is well underway.

The contenders are still getting used to the attention.

“Are we not talking about concrete anymore, or what?” asked Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, speaking at a Monday event hosted by an asphalt manufacturer outside Pittsburgh.

The governor, whose name frequently tops the roster of potential picks, proceeded to dodge 13 minutes of shouted questions about his vice-presidential aspirations — or lack thereof.

“I’m happy to try to answer your questions — I just have to hear them one at a time,” he said to a crowd of reporters that included journalists from national TV networks, adding, “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals.”

Efforts to select a vice-presidential nominee always incite a firestorm of unfounded predictions stoked furiously by busybodies and blowhards. There are, of course, the infamous lists — real and speculative — of prospective candidates, which fuel breathless reporting on the possibilities. Planes are tracked, schedules are scoured and even minor players suddenly transform into figures “close to the candidate.”

Yet this year, the drumbeat has come faster and more enthusiastically. After Americans slogged through nearly two years of an expected presidential matchup with little mystery, the drama and intrigue around Harris’ running-mate selection have reached new heights.

The only thing more exciting than a veepstakes, it seems, is a surprise veepstakes.

Former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who has worked in Washington for nearly a half-century, said he had received dozens of texts about potential picks since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race Sunday.

“Everybody’s enjoying the moment and kind of thinking through scenarios and how exciting some of these combinations could be,” Daschle said. “It’s kind of fun. I really don’t recall ever having this experience before.”

Fun had been in short supply for much of this campaign. But, ultimately, Harris and her vetting team are engaging in a serious — and very accelerated — enterprise.

Typically, campaigns begin thinking about their vice-presidential pick after the primary race ends in the spring. Harris must pick a running mate — someone she meshes with personally and politically, who is prepared to step in as president if needed — before the party’s convention begins Aug. 19 in Chicago, giving her less than a month to make one of the most consequential decisions of her candidacy.

The vice-presidential nominee is likely to be announced during the first half of August. The Democratic National Committee plans for delegates to confirm a vice-presidential nominee by the week of the convention to avoid running afoul of ballot deadlines in California and Washington.

Three people close to the campaign, who were not authorized to talk publicly, say that five people are under serious consideration: Shapiro, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Govs. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. But that list, they warn, remains in flux.

Harris has picked former Attorney General Eric Holder, who once helped run Barack Obama’s vice-presidential vetting, to oversee her choice of a running mate. Candidates have been asked to send their files for vetting, but not everyone has submitted them.

Predictably, campaign aides are not releasing details about the specifics.

“Any reporting on developments or updates in Vice President Harris’ running-mate search are premature and speculative,” Kevin Munoz, a Harris spokesperson, said in a statement. “Vice President Harris is considering a large pool of qualified candidates.”

The script is equally clear for potential contenders. They must duck questions about the process. Just as in dating, they should show interest but never look desperate. And above all, they must never pose a threat to the top of the ticket.

“She’s going to be looking for the right person that will do nothing other than trying to make them succeed in their administration,” said former Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, whom John Kerry considered to be his running mate in 2004. “She’s not going to be worried that they’re going to be off trying to run after she leaves.”

Already, some of the possible candidates have become frequent guests on cable news programs, with appearances that serve as real-time tests of their media skills and that fuel the veepstakes rumor mill.

Walz has done a flurry of recent interviews, including an appearance on Fox News that caught the attention of former President Donald Trump, who complained that the network was making him “fight battles I shouldn’t have to fight.”

“It doesn’t matter convictions, it doesn’t matter failed policies — the Republican Party is stuck with Donald Trump,” said Walz, delivering the kind of attack on the former president that Democratic voters love to hear. “He’s yours, you got him.”

In his appearances, Beshear has attacked Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Trump’s running mate, but has also offered some kind words for the woman who could determine his political future.

“She called me personally just hours after President Biden’s announcement. I admit that meant a lot to me,” he said. “We know that she is a strong and smart person, which will make her a good president. But she is also a kind and empathetic person, and that’s going to make her a great president.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, often mentioned as a contender, broke the rules entirely by saying that she had no plans to leave her job.

“Everyone is always suspicious and asking this question over and over again — I’m not going anywhere,” she told a Michigan reporter, who had staked out her car after an event this week.

That did not stop the speculation. The next day, Whitmer pushed back on reports that the Harris campaign was reexamining the vetting paperwork she had submitted to the Biden campaign in 2020, calling them “inaccurate.”

Traditionally, campaigns look for politicians who could “balance the ticket” by offering geographic, gender and racial diversity, expertise and experience that differ from the presidential nominee, or another kind of political appeal.

Trump flouted that custom this year when he chose Vance, a move widely seen as a doubling down on his conservative message. Vance is a darling of the hard right who has fully embraced Trump’s polarizing politics and his lies about a stolen election.

This year, the principal players understand the stakes of their choice more intimately than most. In 2020, Biden announced his intention to select a woman, narrowing the field in a way that helped lift Harris to the top.

A dozen years earlier, Biden was picked for the opposite reason. Obama, a young senator seeking to become the first Black president, needed a more experienced hand, preferably a white man.

Privately, many Democrats believe there is a limit to just how history-making this ticket should be. Harris, who is Black and South Asian, would be the first female president and a barrier-breaker on several levels. Perhaps, the argument goes, she would do best with a low-key white man from a competitive state — a place with more electoral significance than her home state, California. Most of the names Harris is considering fit that mold.

Democrats “must choose a strong man to round out the ticket,” Ilyse Hogue, the former president of NARAL, the abortion rights organization, argued in an opinion essay this week. “As much as it might pain me to admit, there’s no path to 270 Electoral College votes solely on women’s euphoria.”

But others argue that an extraordinary election year like this one offers the opportunity to break some of those old conventions.

“The timing is right,” said LaTosha Brown, a founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, saying an all-female ticket would present a strong contrast with the Republicans. “They could not only pull it off, but I think that it would shift the American political landscape forever.”

The contenders have their own, increasingly vocal, cheering sections.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who grew friendly with Walz when they served together in Congress, reached out to a New York Times reporter to volunteer that he supported adding the Minnesota governor to the ticket.

“He’s just as real as it gets,” O’Rourke said. “What he’s done in Minnesota is a progressive miracle.”

In Pennsylvania, former Rep. Bob Brady, the chair of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, has been pushing the idea of Shapiro to “anybody who will listen.”

With Shapiro on the ticket, he said, “No question, we win Pennsylvania.”

Daschle offered an even simpler political calculation. “How great would it be, really, to have an astronaut as a vice president?” he said, referring to Kelly, who piloted missions to space.

With Biden gone, he said, Democrats suddenly have a bounty of choices.

“Everybody was just so depressed and so concerned,” he said. “There’s a euphoria right now, and I think you’re going to see the same for the vice president — whoever is chosen.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.