On August 6, Kamala Harris chose a vice presidential candidate. This is Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. He has been re-elected twice in a state where the Democrats do not have a majority and coined the term “weirdo” in reference to Donald Trump, Suspilne reports.
By August 5, Walls had five competitors. The governors of Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky – Josh Shapiro, J.B. Pritzker, and Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who competed with Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.
The latter, among all the candidates for Vice President Harris, received the highest support of Americans in the News/Ipsos poll – 22%. Kelly is a former astronaut and military pilot who flew into space four times, and after his retirement in 2020, he ran for senator from Arizona, one of the traditionally Republican states, where he won, and four years later won again in Arizona. Kelly was one of the senators who supported the allocation of $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine from the beginning (since last spring), and he met with President Zelensky in Kyiv and with Ukrainian pilots at an American base where they were taught to fly F-16s.
On the evening of August 5, Reuters reported, citing sources, that Kamala Harris had narrowed her list to two candidates, Tim Walz and Josh Shapiro. Both are governors who were elected to office in so-called swing states where neither Republicans nor Democrats have an advantage. Both promote a progressive social agenda. Shapiro, in particular, advocated for allowing abortion and legalizing marijuana in Pennsylvania, increased funding for basic education in the state, and as attorney general, he accused Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania of child sexual abuse. Then, within a year, the dioceses paid $84 million to settle the claims of 564 victims.
But in the end, Kamala Harris settled on the candidacy of Tim Walz.
