Shapiro: Lose Battle, Win War

JFK (1956)                          Josh Shapiro

Jeffery Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques, both at Yale, told us just before the Vice President picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate that 

“If Harris wants to sustain the momentum of her campaign and give herself the best chance to win in November, we believe that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would make for the wisest choice.”

To the surprise of the Yale profs and most observers, Jewish Shapiro lost the Harris Veep pick race to Walz. But Shapiro should take heart from the Democrats’ analogous failure to nominate Catholic John Kennedy for Vice President in 1956. 

It turned out well for JFK. When Kennedy failed to achieve the nomination as Vice President that year, his near win ultimately gave him the best of both worlds. He received significant national attention by running for and almost achieving the nomination. But, he was not saddled with being “part of what would be a failed campaign.” (emphasis added) At the Gridiron Club dinner two years later, Kennedy quipped, “I might have won that race with Senator Kefauver--and my political career would now be over.”

In their endorsement of Shapiro, Sonnenfeld and Henriques wrote the Pennsylvania governor “has a track record of pragmatic policymaking that has drawn favorability among groups that many thought impossible in today’s partisan environment," including Democrats and Republicans, business and labor unions, and Muslims and Jews. But “far left groups” used charged slurs, such as “Genocide Josh,” even though Shapiro's views remained in line with the Biden-Harris Administration and “well within the mainstream of the Democratic Party.”

Continuing, Sonnenfeld and Henriques added:

  • commentators have compared Governor Shapiro’s speaking abilities to those of Obama, noting that they even sound alike.
  • a Republican member of the [Pennsylvania] Montgomery County Board of Commissioners during Shapiro's tenure praised Shapiro stating “[he was] the best county commissioner I ever knew."
  • seventeen former GOP officials endorsed Shapiro over his GOP opponent, including former Congressman Charlie Dent and former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.
  • Shapiro supports cutting state corporate taxes in half and has taken steps to implement business friendly policies, make government work at the speed of business, incentivize business innovation and expand pathways into the workforce. 
  • Shapiro is endorsed by both fossil fuel companies and environmental and renewable energy stakeholders.
  • his successes include attracting more than $2 billion in private capital investment and creating thousands of new jobs.
Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques concluded:

Shapiro has been unafraid to engage in discussions about the difficulties embedded in the Israel-Hamas war and what it means to him as a person of Jewish faith.  [His selection] would put [Harris’] words of being a unifier into action. We believe Shapiro would be a true partner [who] has always delivered across a wide bipartisan constituency.

For Democrats, what went wrong?

A Democratic operative quoted in the New York Post said,

Harris was aware the Pennsylvania governor could outshine her. “My honest sense is that Harris had a concern that Shapiro would overshadow her and be the spotlight of the ticket here,” the operative said, confirming earlier reports of the younger Democrat’s ability to upstage some of his party’s national leaders. “What this pick came down to was, more or less, vibes,” the operative added, describing Walz’s as a “Midwestern do-no-harm vibe.”




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