Former Obama attorney general is helping Kamala Harris vet vice presidential picks
Vice President Kamala Harris will get some help choosing her running mate from Eric Holder, the nation’s first Black attorney general who served for six years under former president Barack Obama.
Holder and his firm Covington & Burling LLP will be working to vet potential candidates to join Harris on the Democratic party’s ticket, The Independent has learned.
Harris moved swiftly to clear a path to the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign on Sunday and gave her his endorsement.
Since then, Harris has collected dozens of key endorsements from lawmakers, unions and the delegates who will back her as the party’s nominee.
On Monday night, just over 24 hours after launching her campaign, Harris effectively clinched the nomination by securing a majority of party delegates she will need to back her at next month’s Democratic National Convention, according to an Associated Press survey.
After she arrived at the now-former Biden headquarters in Delaware on Monday afternoon, Harris provided a glimpse of the campaign she is now taking over to face Donald Trump in November as she outlined key priorities and welcomed a team that is made up of mostly familiar faces. Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon will stay on with Harris for President, along with Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
Holder, who helped Obama land his own eventual running mate Biden, will play a crucial role in cementing the Democratic party’s ticket – one of the most important decisions Harris will make in the few crucial weeks before the convention.
In a letter on Sunday announcing he was withdrawing from the race, Biden said that selecting Harris as his running mate in 2020 was one of the best decisions he had ever made.
Among the names up for consideration to join the Harris ticket are: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Holder — who served as attorney general for six years during the Obama administration — also chairs an influential Democratic advocacy group to combat Republican gerrymandering, a notable backbone for voting rights protections that are emerging as a key pillar of the Harris campaign.
“We know we each face a question: what kind of country do we want to live in, a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate,” Harris said to campaign staff and supporters in Wilmington on Monday.
“We each have the ability to answer that question,” she said. “So in the next 106 days, we have work to do. We have doors to knock on, we have people to talk to, we have phone calls to make, and we have an election to win.”
