Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was already irritated by what he describes as “unnecessarily contentious” questions from the crew vetting him to be Kamala Harris’s working mate when a senior aide made one closing inquiry: “Have you ever ever been an agent of the Israeli authorities?”
The query got here from President Biden’s former White Home counsel Dana Remus, who was a key member of Harris’s vice-presidential search crew.
Shapiro, one of the vital well-known Jewish elected officers within the nation—and one in all no less than three Jewish politicians contemplating a run for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—says he took umbrage on the query. “Had I been a double agent for Israel? Was she kidding? I instructed her how offensive the query was,” Shapiro writes in his forthcoming guide, The place We Hold the Mild, a duplicate of which The Atlantic obtained forward of its launch on January 27.
The trade grew to become much more tense, he writes, when Remus requested whether or not Shapiro had ever spoken with an undercover Israeli agent. The questions left the governor feeling uneasy concerning the prospect of being Harris’s No. 2, a task that in the end went to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. After Harris and Walz misplaced to Donald Trump, many Democrats have been essential of her determination to bypass Shapiro, the favored governor of the nation’s largest swing state. In his guide, Shapiro says that the choice could not have been absolutely hers; he says he had “a knot in my abdomen” all through a vetting course of that was extra combative than he had anticipated. Shapiro wrote that he determined to take his identify out of the working after a one-on-one assembly with Harris that featured extra clashes, together with about Israel.
The account highlights among the fault strains that Democrats are navigating as they attempt to put the 2024 marketing campaign behind them and chart a path again to the White Home. Along with his guide, Shapiro goals to showcase why Democrats misplaced and the way his model of consensus-building politics can usher them again to energy. However earlier than the consensus constructing, it appears, Shapiro felt compelled to do some rating settling.
Harris, in any case, had written a surprisingly candid account of her truncated and, in the end, tortured choice course of for a working mate, and it didn’t make Shapiro look good. When my colleague Tim Alberta first knowledgeable Shapiro of Harris’s description of their assembly in her guide, 107 Days, he grew uncharacteristically sharp-tongued. “That’s full and utter bullshit,” he instructed Alberta. “I can let you know that her accounts are simply blatant lies.” Shapiro is extra measured in The place We Hold the Mild, taking pains to not assault Harris herself and as a substitute blaming her employees for probing him in a means that at instances felt gratuitous.
“Remus was simply doing her job,” Shapiro wrote concerning the Israeli-spy inquiry. “I get it. However the truth that she requested, or was instructed to ask that query by another person, stated lots about among the individuals across the VP.” (Remus and an aide to Harris didn’t reply to a request for remark.) In an announcement, Shapiro’s spokesperson Manuel Bonder didn’t deal with the apparently disagreeable vetting course of, and would solely say that the governor had written “a really private guide” about his religion, his household, and what he has realized from a profession of public service. He stated the 2024 election was “one small half” of Shapiro’s “a lot broader story.”
Shapiro doesn’t write concerning the vice-presidential search till close to the tip of his guide, which in any other case serves up the usual fare of a pre-campaign-launch political memoir, tracing his rise from a childhood in suburban Philadelphia to the governorship of the nation’s fifth-most-populous state. Shapiro writes concerning the significance of his Jewish religion, his position pursuing justice for survivors of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, his admiration for—and early assist of—President Obama, and the astute political instincts of his spouse and adviser, Lori.
The guide opens with the harrowing firebombing of the governor’s mansion on Passover final 12 months by a person who later instructed prosecutors that he blamed Shapiro for the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. Shapiro and his household needed to flee the house, which suffered vital harm from the fireplace, in the course of the evening after being alerted by a state trooper. The governor writes that his willingness to publicly embrace his Jewish religion earlier than and after the assault has been welcomed by individuals of assorted non secular backgrounds, suggesting that his expertise as a part of an observant Jewish household can be a outstanding a part of any run for the presidency.
The place We Hold the Mild is typical of the form of memoir that candidates launch earlier than working for president. In it, Shapiro extols the virtues of utilizing politics to enhance individuals’s lives. He additionally makes delicate however clear coverage distinctions between himself and different outstanding members of his social gathering, together with some eyeing the social gathering’s presidential nomination.
He will get forward of among the main questions that Democrats are more likely to face within the 2028 main, writing, for instance, that he would have dealt with coronavirus lockdowns in another way, that he didn’t assist the defund-the-police rhetoric in the summertime of 2020, and that he privately urged to Biden that he ought to contemplate dropping out of the presidential race after an abysmal debate efficiency in opposition to Trump. He additionally defends his assist for slicing taxes and his extra permissive stance on fossil fuels, insurance policies that put him exterior the mainstream of the Democratic political class. He writes that anti-Semitism has develop into “a lot scarier, far more actual” in recent times and suggests a transparent distinction between free speech and protest exercise that veers into intimidation.
However the governor additionally devotes a number of pages to offering his aspect of the story from the 2024 seek for a vice-presidential candidate, after Harris wrote an in depth account of the historically secretive course of, which included a less-than-warm assembly with Shapiro.
Their sit-down on August 4, 2024, occurred shortly after Shapiro bought off the telephone with Remus, telling her that he had no means of realizing if he had ever communicated with an undercover Israeli agent.
Harris wrote that earlier than they met on the Naval Observatory, Shapiro requested employees there about what number of bedrooms the compound had and whether or not the Smithsonian may mortgage him artwork to brighten the place. The unmistakable implication was that the governor, seen by some Democrats as an bold operator along with his eye on the presidency, was already measuring the drapes earlier than being chosen for the No. 2 position. Shapiro, not surprisingly, provides a unique take, writing that his transient dialogue with employees from the residence was solely “small speak” that had been “analyzed, misrepresented, and picked aside by members of the vice chairman’s crew.”
After Harris and Shapiro sat down, in a eating room that had been cleared of most furnishings aside from two chairs and a desk, there was little in the best way of small speak or pleasantries. Every described the dialog as blunt, missing the normal heat of two individuals making an attempt to find out if a four-year partnership would work. Their dialogue was particularly tense when Harris requested Shapiro if he would apologize for a few of his feedback about protesters on the College of Pennsylvania who had constructed encampments to decry Israel’s army marketing campaign in Gaza and, in some instances, intimidated Jewish college students.
Shapiro wrote that he “flatly” instructed Harris that he wouldn’t. It was one in all a number of instances he claims that he needed to stand his floor after Harris’s crew introduced up points on which he had taken a unique stance from hers and requested if he can be prepared to apologize or in any other case make a public about-face.
Shapiro wrote that he understood the marketing campaign’s want to probe his background and coverage positions, however “didn’t see something incorrect with not aligning completely” with Harris on all points, including that “they weren’t going to increase her universe by doing the very same factor that she had been doing all these years.”
He instructed Harris’s crew that he revered their position and was submitting willingly to the vetting course of, however he was “not going to apologize for who I’m or for the positions I’ve taken over time.”
“It nagged at me that their questions weren’t actually about substance,” he wrote. “Reasonably, they have been questioning my ideology, my method, my world view.”
After the back-and-forth on coverage, Shapiro requested Harris some questions of his personal, probing for a way of what sort of position she wished her vice chairman to play. Harris, he wrote, described her personal expertise as vice chairman in stark phrases, saying she had had a tough time able that had little autonomy or govt authority.
“I used to be stunned by how a lot she appeared to dislike the position,” he wrote. “She famous that her chief of employees can be giving me my instructions, lamented that the vice chairman didn’t have a personal toilet of their workplace, and the way tough it was for her at instances to not have a voice within the determination making.”
Shapiro stated he tried to make a case for a extra equitable partnership, with the vice chairman having unimpeded entry to the president and the power to weigh in on choices earlier than they have been made. “I instructed him bluntly that was an unrealistic expectation,” Harris wrote in 107 Days. “A vice chairman is just not a co-president. I had a nagging concern that he can be unable to accept a task as quantity two and that it might put on on our partnership.”
The disagreement over the position in the end left each politicians feeling {that a} Harris-Shapiro ticket, for all its electoral promise, is probably not a superb match. “It may have gone in another way, had I left that assembly pondering that she would need a companion and somebody to bounce issues off of earlier than she in the end made her choices,” Shapiro wrote. “There was a world through which it may have labored, however that was not this world.”
Shapiro finally returned to Pennsylvania along with his thoughts made up—although not earlier than Remus spoke with him once more, he writes, and urged that the position of vice chairman may be a monetary burden for him and his spouse: Shapiro’s monetary vetting confirmed that he didn’t have a lot cash, and the vice presidency would require Lori to purchase a brand new wardrobe and pay the prices for second-lady-level hair and make-up, even because the couple can be required to pay for meals and leisure on the vice chairman’s residence.
Shapiro stated he was greatly surprised: “Are you making an attempt to persuade me not to do that?” he recollects asking. Remus responded that she simply wished him to make sure this was one thing he wished. Ultimately, Shapiro wrote, he realized that it was not.
Harris later wrote that her first selection for vice chairman was truly Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, however felt it was “too huge of a danger” so as to add a homosexual man to a ticket led by a Black lady with a Jewish husband.
With Shapiro, Harris, and Buttigieg all on a listing of potential presidential hopefuls in 2028, the vice-presidential choice course of from 2024 is reemerging at a key second.
As a lot as Democrats want to flip the web page on the presidential race that ushered Trump again into the White Home, Shapiro’s guide provides one other alternative to select aside one of the vital pivotal choices of the 2024 marketing campaign. And it seemingly isn’t the ultimate phrase on the vetting course of. The second leg of Harris’s guide tour is scheduled to begin on February 2.
