YORK, Pennsylvania — With Gov. Tim Walz‘s (D-MN) wobbly performance during his one and only debate and former President Donald Trump regaining ground in Pennsylvania, Vice President Kamala Harris could come to regret not choosing Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) to be her running mate.
The Harris campaign is adamant Walz won his debate against Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), demonstrating to the 43 million people who watched why Harris chose him. But with election experts giving Vance the win for the ease of his delivery, some are openly wondering whether Harris would have been better positioned for November had Shapiro been on the ticket with her.
For Cook Political Report election analyst Dave Wasserman, Harris is fortunate that vice presidential debates matter less than their presidential counterparts as Walz missed opportunities that a stronger performer, such as Shapiro, may have seized.
“There are more than a few Democratic strategists who would feel more confident in their chances had had Harris picked Shapiro, or perhaps even [Kentucky Gov. Andy] Beshear,” Wasserman told the Washington Examiner. “Both Shapiro and Beshear have more pragmatic reputations because they served in states with Republican legislatures, whereas Walz has had a Democratic trifecta in Minnesota.”
That is important considering Harris is trying to reach out to more centrist Democrats and independents who may have voted for President Joe Biden in states, including Pennsylvania, in 2020, which this year has 19 electoral votes and could decide the election. Trump currently has an average 3 percentage point lead in the Keystone state, according to RealClearPolitics.
Wasserman contended Walz spending time during the debate introducing the public to his record in Minnesota may have pleased liberal Democrats, but it came at the expense of “pressing the case against Trump, or talking about some of the national priorities that would make him seem fit for the stage.”
“If Pennsylvania ends up being the decisive state and she loses it by a point, absolutely,” there could be buyer’s remorse, he said. “She clearly made a pick with personal compatibility in mind and so did Trump, but it was not the pick that necessarily optimizes her chances of winning the election and in an exceptionally tight race plenty of Democrats are very concerned about that.”
David Urban, a Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2020, similarly asserted his “friend” Shapiro would have been a “lay up” for Harris and that the governor would have “probably” prevailed over the vice president had there been an open primary.
“He’s the most gifted political athlete on the Democratic bench at this point in time,” the managing director of lobbying shop BGR Group told the Washington Examiner. “For the current vice president not to choose him as her vice president is political malpractice.”
That is because Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by 44,000 votes and Biden won the state in 2020 by 81,000 votes, and Shapiro’s popularity could have put some of those ballots in Harris’s “pocket,” per Urban. In last month’s Philadelphia Inquirer-New York Times-Siena College poll, 59% of likely Pennsylvania voters “strongly approve” or “somewhat approve” of Shapiro. In comparison, 51% provided the same response about Harris and 45% about Trump, with a third of likely Trump voters perceiving Shapiro favorably.
Urban asked whether Shapiro’s own political aspirations or his Jewish faith amid the Israel–Hamas war influenced Harris’s decision, particularly with the importance of Michigan, which is home to one of the country’s most dynamic Arab and Muslim American communities.
“I think on several fronts, it was a challenge,” he said. “She chose vanilla and it showed [during the debate].”
Philadelphia-based Drexel University political science professor emeritus Bill Rosenberg underscored Shapiro was a prominent supporter of Harris and Walz before the debate, appearing multiple times on TV on their behalf.
“I think that they made a calculated decision to have someone that would not be, when you looked at them, not be viewed as an East Coast elite liberal,” Rosenberg told the Washington Examiner. “Not that Josh Shapiro is necessarily an East Coast liberal, but he’s going to get viewed a lot like that. He’s very highly educated. He’s got a law degree. He’s a governor. He’s been attorney general and so forth.”
Vance had a smoother delivery from the start of the debate when he took the time to share personal details about his upbringing made famous by his Hillbilly Elegy memoir, whereas Walz stumbled out of the gate and didn’t appear to shake his nerves until the final minutes of the face-off.
While Vance has routinely taken questions from the press and sat for interviews since becoming Trump’s running mate this summer, Walz has largely avoided questions from journalists. The rustiness especially showed when he fumbled an answer on why he claimed to witness the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 when he wasn’t there, eventually admitting he “misspoke.”
Vice presidential historian Joel Goldstein suspected Shapiro, like Vance, is “a polished debater” but “one never can know how an alternative selection would have turned out.”
“The Walz selection has seemed to contribute to Vice President Harris’s campaign, both based on his favorable rating before and after the debate, his campaign performance generally, and the messages his selection sends about Vice President Harris,” Goldstein told the Washington Examiner.
Ed Lee, director of Emory University’s Alben W. Barkley Forum for Debate, Deliberation, and Dialogue, was more comfortable predicting Shapiro would have been “better” during the debate.
“He is a smoother communicator. His lawyer background would have helped. He is a polished policy wonk. However, persona and personality are just as important,” Lee told the Washington Examiner.
“[The debate] was the shadow side of Walz’s folksy appeal and upbringing. His genius is the ability to instantly and authentically connect with rural white farmers in a way Shapiro can’t. You take the downside risk of last night because the upside in November is astronomically high,” Lee said.
University of Michigan debate director Aaron Kall conceded Walz “had a very slow start to the debate as he was clearly nervous and the first question about bombing Iran threw him for a loop.” But the governor was more confident answering questions about abortion and healthcare, and ended on a “high note discussing the 2020 election results and what happened on Jan. 6.”
“Some polling indicates that Shapiro’s presence on the ticket wouldn’t move the needle much in Pennsylvania, even among Jewish voters,” Kall told the Washington Examiner. “He didn’t seem to have a great deal of chemistry with Kamala Harris and can probably be a more effective campaign surrogate around the state of Pennsylvania in his gubernatorial capacity.”
“If the Harris campaign ends up losing Pennsylvania and the race by a tiny electoral margin, there will certainly be some buyers’ remorse about the selection of Tim Walz, but his recent debate performance was workmanlike and authentic,” he said.
Post-debate, the Harris campaign said Walz will travel around the country and engage with voters and reporters more, through rallies, smaller events, fundraisers, and targeted interviews in Arizona, California, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
After Walz’s first post-debate rally in York, Pennsylvania as part of his bus tour of the state, local small business owner Michael, 50, who preferred not to share his last name, said Shapiro would “have been a good pick, but you can’t not like Walz.”
“He’s kind of a guy you want to hang out with,” he told the Washington Examiner.
His partner Lia, 49, added Harris depends on Walz “to talk to people that normally wouldn’t open their minds to her.”
“He was like a way to open the door and that’s what she needed,” she said.
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Like Michael and Lia, Sheila Zent, a 69-year-old Hanover retiree, was not familiar with Walz before Harris nominated him, but agreed “there’s a lot of rural Pennsylvanians that really relate to” him.
For Zent’s friend Stacy Ratliff, a 63-year-old Spring Grove retiree, Shapiro is required in Pennsylvania to protect abortion access in the state.
