Build that Walz: Did the curse of Lloyd Bentsen doom Josh Shapiro’s VP hopes?

Lloyd Bentsen was the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate par excellence in 1988. Bentsen, a representative from Texas for six years through early 1955, left Congress to go into business and made his fortune in land development and banking. Bentsen won a Senate seat in the state by defeating Houston-area Republican Rep. George Bush — no initials were used back then. Bentsen rose through the Senate to become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Nor was he done rising. Bentsen went on, under President Bill Clinton, to become secretary of the Treasury.

Bentsen became the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee under Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, facing off against a Republican ticket headed by Bush, by then vice president himself for nearly eight years in President Ronald Reagan’s administration. Bentsen, in the understudy candidate’s role, uttered his most famous line in the history of debates for national office. During the 1988 vice presidential debate, the Republican nominee chosen by the GOP standard-bearer Bush, Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle, tried to fend off questions about his age and experience. Quayle, with four years in the House and almost eight in the Senate under his belt, compared himself to the late president John F. Kennedy, who had a combined 14 years of congressional experience when, as a senator from Massachusetts in 1960, he narrowly won the White House. The older Bentsen replied drolly, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

This led to what some would refer to as Quayle’s “deer-in-the-headlights moment,” with a series of rabid blinks before he replied. It hurt Quayle’s reputation, but it didn’t help Democrats out as much as one might expect. There was plenty of grousing that year that Bentsen, not Dukakis, should have been the presidential nominee.

Because of a Texas law passed to benefit a previous vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, Bentsen was also able to run for reelection to the Senate while pursuing the vice presidency. Given that choice, Texans overwhelmingly voted to send him back to the Senate instead of to the Naval Observatory. The Dukakis-Bentsen ticket lost Texas and the White House, securing only 10 states and 111 votes in the Electoral College.

The curse of Bentsen was that he was a vice presidential choice who outshone his running mate. As a political matter, the vice presidential nominee is supposed to serve in a support role, as a defender and attack dog for his (or her) party. The running mate is not supposed to make the would-be president look worse by contrast.

That worry is likely one reason Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) was passed over for the vice presidential nomination by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, the current vice president, who went through a similar vetting process before ultimately being chosen by future President Joe Biden. Few Pennsylvania politicians are more effective than Shapiro when it comes to getting out votes or driving an agenda.

Pennsylvania is a must-win state for Democrats. Few scenarios allow them to lose there and prevail in the Electoral College. In the 2020 elections, when Biden and Harris carried Pennsylvania narrowly, Shapiro ran ahead of the ticket in his reelection bid for the office of state attorney general. In 2022, he crushed Republican opponent, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, in the gubernatorial race with over 56%, and he had coattails. His party flipped control of the state House of Representatives.

There are three additional reasons why Shapiro might have been passed over. The first has to do with Israel. Shapiro, who is Jewish, has been broadly supportive of the state’s war with Hamas in Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that killed about 1,200 people, with hundreds more taken hostage. Harris has been more skeptical, going so far as to boycott Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent address to Congress. She’s also been more sympathetic to the pro-Hamas protests on college campuses than Shapiro.

The second reason for the pass was Shapiro’s famous ambition and razor-sharp elbows. Going into the weekend before Harris announced the choice on Aug. 6, Shapiro looked set to receive the nomination. The first rally of a tour was set to begin in Philadelphia, after all. But then Mayor Cherelle Parker accidentally released a pre-produced Harris-Shapiro video, which the governor’s team helped to produce, to social media four days before. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), an occasional Shapiro rival, also reportedly lobbied Harris against the pick.

The third reason was union unease with Shapiro over school choice. Though he eventually vetoed the measure, Shapiro initially lobbied the Pennsylvania legislature for $100 million in funding to send children in failing public schools to private schools.

In opting for former geography teacher, high school football coach, and two-term Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) instead, Harris went in a very different direction. She chose a candidate who checks all the boxes on the progressive checklist and is not likely to outshine her.

“Minnesota’s strength comes from our values, our commitment to working together, to seeing past our differences, to always being willing to lend a helping hand,” Walz said at his first rally as his party’s presumptive vice presidential nominee in Philadelphia. “Those were the same values I learned on the family farm and tried to instill in my students. I took it to Congress and to the state Capitol, and now Vice President Harris and I are running to take those very values to the White House.”

Walz’s pick means that the Democrats will have to fight harder in Pennsylvania and other “blue wall” states, including Michigan and Wisconsin. It may also open an old wound. Minnesota was ground zero for the George Floyd riots that rocked the country in 2020.

“Lives were lost, over 1,500 businesses and buildings were burned, approximately $500 million in property damage occurred, and community morale was deeply affected,” a Minnesota state Senate report found, laying some of the mayhem at the governor’s feet.

Though Walz did eventually call out the National Guard, he hesitated. That hesitation allegedly allowed a costly and deadly escalation of the conflict.

The Minnesota legislative report found that Walz and other “elected local leaders identified with the causes promoted by the demonstrators, causing them to lose sight of their responsibility to protect the public from criminal acts committed during the riots.” It’s a good bet that Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign will put that finding on blast as Election Day approaches.

Jeremy Lott is the author of The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency.