Joe Biden met with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer last weekend, the first in-person session he is known to have had with a potential running mate. The news comes as Biden prepares to select a partner for the 2020 ticket, a decision expected to come this week from the presumptive Democratic nominee. Whitmer has held a consistent spot on Biden’s shortlist of possible vice presidents and, as the announcement nears, appears to be a front-runner. On Sunday, per the Associated Press, the first-term governor traveled to Delaware for an interview with Biden, a meeting that Whitmer’s office declined to confirm or deny. “We don’t discuss her personal schedule,” a spokesperson said. Biden’s campaign declined to comment.
Whitmer has emerged as a prominent candidate since delivering the Democratic response to the State of the Union address in February and, most recently, responding to the coronavirus. The Michigan governor took aggressive measures to combat the outbreak, which hit her state hard, instituting what the Washington Post noted to be “one of the country’s most aggressive stay-at-home orders.” The decision, along with her criticism of the federal response to the coronavirus, prompted backlash among Republicans—including President Donald Trump, who in March said he had a “big problem” with the “young, a woman governor” and cautioned Vice President Mike Pence not to call “the woman in Michigan.”
Senator Kamala Harris and former national security adviser Susan Rice have been seen as the two front-runners in the vice-presidential search, which Axios wrote Wednesday to be “the nearly unanimous read” coming from more than a dozen Biden confidants. Other possible candidates include Senator Tammy Duckworth, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and representatives Val Demings and Karen Bass.
While Whitmer has sought to address racism and racial inequality through measures like proposed police reforms and the creation of an advisory council of Black leaders, she herself wouldn’t bring racial diversity to the ticket—something that, amid a national reckoning about racial injustice, has put an intense focus on Biden’s pick.
As the New York Times reported, Biden was supposed to have chosen his running mate already. He initially planned to make a decision by August 1 and then said he would do so by the end of the week, a self-imposed deadline that has passed. “The deadline for a V.P. nomination is the convention,” said Representative and Biden campaign co-chairman Cedric Richmond, referencing the event that kicks off August 17. “He’s very deliberative with his decision-making. It works.”
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