The selection of a running mate is arguably the most important decision any presidential campaign has to make. But Vice President Kamala Harris may have to compress her entire selection process into about two weeks to comply with an Aug. 7 deadline Democrats have set for themselves to finalize their ticket.
That deadline could push Harris to vet, meet with, select and announce her running mate in the next 15 days, according to numerous Democrats involved in the process — or potentially risk losing her spot on the ballot in Ohio. Even if she chooses to ignore that deadline, it would only buy her another two weeks, with the Democratic National Convention set to kick off Aug. 19.
“That’s something that will take some speed dating,” said Michael LaRosa, the former press secretary to First Lady Jill Biden. “There’s a lot to consider. You have electoral calculus. You have personal chemistry. You have someone who really matches your ideology.”
Most Democrats seem eager to rally around Harris after President Joe Biden withdrew from his re-election bid Sunday and endorsed her.
“The fact that there is already really a lot of consensus for her, so it makes sense to go into the convention unified around a ticket,” said LaRosa.
For months, Democrats had been planning to formally nominate their presidential candidate in an unusual pre-convention virtual roll call to meet the Aug. 7 deadline and avoid potential legal issues in Ohio, where they worry Republican-backed lawsuits could result in their candidate getting kicked off the ballot.
The deadline issue arose in May, when Republicans in the Ohio state legislature dragged their feet on amending the state’s Aug. 7 deadline for parties to submit names of their nominees. This year, that deadline fell before the Democratic National Convention, and while fixing such discrepancies has been painless in the past, it was not this time. The legislature eventually passed a law pushing the deadline back, but delays in the process mean the fix won’t go into effect until Sept. 1.
Ohio’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, insists the issue has been resolved and that there is no threat to Democrats’ ballot access, noting local election officials have already been instructed to follow the new deadline.
“Political parties have until September 1 to submit their nominees for President and Vice President to our office,” said Ben Kindel, a spokesperson for the secretary of state. “Democrat proxies know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio.”
But the Aug. 7 deadline will still officially be on the books in a few weeks, and Democrats do not trust LaRose, whom they view as overly partisan. Meanwhile, conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation have been telegraphing plans to bring as much election litigation that might trip up Democrats as they can, so Democrats say they have no choice but to meet the old Aug. 7 deadline.
Heritage’s Oversight Project is actively searching for plaintiffs in Ohio, and leading Republican lawmakers have also said in public remarks that they are interested in exploiting the Ohio date issue.
“I think they’ve got legal hurdles in some of these states, and it’ll be litigated, I would expect,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on CNN Sunday morning.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday that “we have to have all of this wrapped up by August 7.”
“And so if the nominee so chooses,” Harrison continued, “We will likely have our VP nominee also by August 7.”
The Democratic National Convention’s Rules Committee will meet Wednesday to consider the plan for the unusual virtual roll call vote. A draft rule, circulated to delegates Tuesday afternoon and obtained by NBC News, stipulates that the window for delegates to vote virtually for the presidential nominee will begin “on or after” Aug. 1.
But the draft rule is silent on when the vice presidential nominee needs to be selected. And it forgoes the need for a separate roll call vote to make the selection official. That should buy Harris some extra time, presumably giving her until Aug. 7 to announce her running mate.
Still, many Democrats are hoping she makes her decision by Aug. 1 so delegates can know the full ticket when they are voting during the virtual roll call.
Later in August, at the national convention in Chicago, delegates will hold an in-person “confirmatory and ceremonial vote to affirm the Vice Presidential nominee,” according to the draft rule.
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