By last Thursday, Holder and Remus had compiled their findings for a meeting Friday with a panel of trusted confidants who conducted the first interviews. They included Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and former Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a top Biden adviser who has remained on the Harris campaign.
By Saturday, the team had whittled the list down to three names — Walz, Shapiro and Kelly — who were told to prepare for face-to-face meetings with Harris.
On Sunday, the black SUVs with out-of-state plates slipped through the gates of the Washington Naval Observatory, home to the vice president’s residence, on their way to the most important meeting of their occupants’ lives.
Walz left his meeting feeling confident. Shapiro did not.
“He wrestled with it Sunday,” said a person close to Shapiro, because he “loves his job” and, only two years in, has more he wants to do. “[He’s] all in for her, no matter where he sits,” the source added.
By the end of the weekend, Harris had been speaking so much with candidates and advisers that her voice was growing hoarse, and she took to carrying throat lozenges to the nonstop meetings.
Meanwhile, beyond the black iron fence of the observatory, the apparatus to support the eventual running mate began to whir to life.
Former Biden State Department official Liz Allen was tapped to be the eventual running mate’s chief of staff, while “jump teams” were dispatched to the finalists in case they were chosen. Staffers at the campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, began preparing graphics, videos, talking points and even stump speeches for each of the finalists.
Aides tried to buy Harris as much time as possible, printing signs with different potential candidates and even changing party rules — ironically via a party committee Walz chaired — so she could make her pick after the party formally nominated her.
“People were like it was ‘The Bachelor’ playing out in real time,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., joked outside a polling place Tuesday.
Candidates who have gone through vetting processes in previous years describe it as a grueling and uncomfortable process that more than one have compared to a proctology exam.
There are exhaustive questionnaires about the candidates’ legal, financial, political, personal, family and employment backgrounds, followed by hourslong interviews known as “murder boards” at which dirty laundry is aired and hypothetical scenarios are presented to see how the candidates react. And then, maybe, they get to meet with the candidate for the actual job interview.
“It’s a grind of a process,” said former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, who was vetted to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016.
Loyalty to Biden
If Walz was the underdog, Shapiro was seen as the front-runner from the beginning, followed by Kelly — and all three ended up as finalists.
In the small world of Democratic politics, the two governors are friends, and they attended a Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey last year, along with former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who served in the House with Walz and has been boosting him behind the scenes.
“Lori and I consider Tim and Gwen to be good friends of ours and we are excited for them and for the country to get to know the great people we know them to be,” Shapiro said in a statement Tuesday.
Kelly had the most impressive résumé of any candidate, but many Democrats see him as an underwhelming speaker and personally cool.
Some Harris allies also felt he was not loyal enough to Biden in the trying weeks after his poor debate performance and believed he had not done enough to defend the administration’s border policies, according to a person familiar with the process.
Kelly praised Walz in a statement, noting that his wife, Gabby Giffords, served with Walz in the House.
“Gabby and I are going to do everything we can to make Kamala Harris and Tim Walz the next president and vice president,” he said.
Kelly’s team did not respond to a request for additional comment.
