Why Josh Shapiro might be Kamala Harris’s running mate pick

Kamala Harris is days — if not mere hours — from publicly announcing her selection of a running mate for the remainder of the 2024 cycle. A Yinzer may be at the top of her list.

Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro emerged early on as a strong contenderin the running to serve as the vice president’s own future VP, with Harris now at the top of the Democratic ticket and Joe Biden stepping aside. Married to highschool sweetheart Lori Ferrara, the governor and his wife moved back to Pennsylvania to raise their children after Shapiro graduated from Georgetown Law. It was his law school time which saw him get his foot in the door as a political operative — he worked as an intern for Carl Levin’s Senate office.

He almost never got into politics at all. “I started as a pre-med student, but a few months into freshman year, I nearly flunked out of organic chemistry,” he revealed to students at University of Rochester in 2023.

A swing-state governor enjoying a wave of popularity through his first term, Shapiro checks several boxes for the Harris campaign.

His ability to drive out votes for Harris particularly in western Pennsylvania is possibly Shapiro’s most important selling point. The governor’s commanding victory in 2022, a 15-point brutalizing of his opponent Doug Mastriano, was aided in part by the fact that Shapiro was about to turn out voters in every county. Even in deep-red Republican counties with far fewer voters, where Democrats are often wiped out, the governor was about to turn out between 17-30 per cent of the vote in his favor. Compare that to Mastriano, who received just 13.1 per cent of the vote in Philadelphia County, the second-largest district by voter turnout.

If Shapiro were able to deliver Pennsylvania and its 19