Shapiro could help Harris win Pennsylvania but hurt her elsewhere

Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) has emerged as a top contender to be Vice President Kamala Harris‘s 2024 running mate, and while he might offer her a leg up in his home state of Pennsylvania, he might cost her with progressive Democrat voters in other areas.

Alongside Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), Shapiro stands out among the short list of other potential veep picks based solely on what they offer the Democratic ticket in critical battleground states.

Shapiro, widely viewed as a centrist Democrat in the mold of President Joe Biden, has only been in office since 2023, but he’s stacked up surprising support from Republicans over the past year-plus.
Shapiro won a landslide victory over state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-PA) in 2022, and his in-state approval rating this past swing approached 60%, according to a poll from the New York Times, including more than 40% approval among Republicans.

The first-term governor can likely point to two factors driving his relative popularity on the right, namely past support for school choice vouchers and a strident defense of Israel. Yet some Democrats argue those same attributes could damage Harris’s standing with progressives, should she select him as a running mate.

Last year, Shapiro crossed party lines to support a $100 million school choice voucher system but eventually vetoed the measure following heavy backlash from members of his own party.

And on Israel, the governor was one of just a handful of prominent Democrats to openly condemn campus protests calling for an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza earlier this year.
Shapiro’s Israel positions have pressed a number of Democratic activists to publicly petition Harris not to settle on him as her vice presidential pick, including an interest group waging a “No Genocide Josh” campaign online in opposition to his potential selection.

Filmmaker Michael Moore, a longtime progressive activist, argued in a Monday essay that selecting Shapiro not only hampers Harris in Michigan, the battleground state with the largest Arab and Muslim American populations, but could reverse the recent upswing in support she’s seen from young voters. 

“If Vice President Harris appoints Josh Shapiro as her Vice Presidential candidate, this too may result in losing Michigan. Shapiro said it’s ‘antisemitic’ for anyone to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel in order to convince them to stop their apartheid behavior,” Moore, a Michigan native, wrote. “He also cruelly compared peaceful college students to the Ku Klux Klan because they were calling for an end to the slaughter in Gaza. Actions like these will diminish the Arab American vote for Harris and depress a large swath of the youth vote throughout the country.”

Furthermore, Pennsylvania’s Democratic nominee for Treasurer, Erin McClelland accused Shapiro, driven by his own alleged ambitions for the presidency, of potentially undermining Harris in the future and seeking to cover up a sexual assault allegation raised against a political ally in the past. 

“I want a VP pick that’s secure enough to be second under a woman, is content to be VP & won’t undermine the President to maneuver his own election & doesn’t sweep sexual harassment under the rug,” she said on July 26.

A number of Pennsylvania Democrats, including Democratic Party Chairman Sharif Street, have pushed back on McLelland’s claims. The Harris campaign declined to comment for this article, but multiple veteran Democratic operatives familiar with her campaign strategy discounted concerns about Shapiro negatively impacting the vice president’s campaign.

“Everyone on Vice President Harris’s short list has been a stalwart defender of the Biden-Harris agenda and would be an asset to her campaign,” one strategist told the Washington Examiner without going into detail about how Shapiro or other potential running mates could influence the electoral map for Democrats.

“We should view Josh Shapiro’s genuine faith with respect,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a leading progressive voice in Congress, similarly said in a tweet on Friday. “He should be judged on the same standard as all the other VP candidates.”

“Every potential nominee for Vice President is pro-Israel. Yet only one, Josh Shapiro, has been singled out by a far-left smear campaign calling him ‘Genocide Josh,’” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) added in a statement. “The reason he is treated differently from the rest? Antisemitism.” 

Shapiro himself has largely avoided commenting on the veepstakes but has campaigned hard for Harris in recent days, including stops across Pennsylvania over the weekend and on Monday.

“You know what we believe in, Pennsylvania? We believe in real freedom in this commonwealth and in this country. And you know who else believes in real freedom? Kamala Harris believes in real freedom,” the governor, flanked by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), declared at a rally outside of Philadelphia on Monday. “Donald Trump sure is dangerous, and we’ve seen how close these elections can be — 55,000 votes between Pennsylvania and Michigan back in 2016. It’s scary what he’s proposed in this Project 2025. It’s scary that the guardrails are off him, but let me tell you some friends. I’m more optimistic than ever before.”