Who Would Hillary Clinton’s Vice President Be?
After a strong showing on Super Tuesday, the Clinton camp is pretty confident Hillary has the nomination all but locked up. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook sent around a memo Wednesday morning outlining his assessment that it will very soon be “mathematically impossible” for Sanders to make up his delegate deficit, even with his leads in several upcoming contests.
Primary anxieties eased, Clinton and her aides can now turn their attention to devising a strategy to defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, and to compiling and vetting a shortlist of running mates to help them. It’ll be months before anyone’s choice for vice president will be named, but the process of vetting and picking usually starts about now. Here are a few good men (and one woman) who Clinton may have on her list.
Tom Perez
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who endorsed Clinton at an Iowa campaign event in December, is a good bet. “Those of us who know this man, and have seen him as our secretary of labor, are so enthusiastic about him and what he’s doing and what he stands for,” Clinton said. “I could not be more honored or really personally happier than to have him here with me in Sioux City.” She went on to hail Perez’s leadership at the Department of Labor, particularly his efforts to expand earned sick days and paid leave, telling the audience, “There is no greater advocate for working families” than Perez. High praise from a woman who has made her efforts advocating for working families one of the central messages of her campaign.
Perez, who was raised by Dominican parents in Upstate New York, has strong ties to labor groups and the Latino community — two factions that lobbied President Obama to nominate him for attorney general before he was eventually named labor secretary. Perez’s labor bonafides could help bring in labor movement diehards who’ve sided with Bernie Sanders in the primary. His background as a lawyer in the Department of Justice’s civil rights division would help the reputation Clinton has been working to build as the candidate who can do the most to combat racial injustice. He led the DOJ’s investigation into Trayvon Martin’s shooting by George Zimmerman. The DOJ was ultimately unable to find grounds to bring a case against Zimmerman, but Sanford police chief Bill Lee was fired after the investigation began.
Sherrod Brown
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who backed Clinton in October, is one of the most prominent progressives in the Senate. Outside of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, it wouldn’t get much better for the liberal base Clinton will need in the fall. Speaking of the fall, picking Brown might bolster Clinton’s chances of swinging the crucial state of Ohio in Democrats’ favor in November. The senator has a sterling progressive record: He’s voted repeatedly against measures banning same-sex marriage (including DOMA) over the course of his political career, he opposed the war in Iraq, and he’s proposed legislation that would break up the big banks.
Brown has been a fierce critic of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Clinton also came out against in the fall, and a strong advocate for LGBT voters and union members, groups that Clinton has made inroads with, and for veterans, a contingent with which she could use some help. And Brown seems eager to offer any help he can; as he told Chris Matthews, “I have total confidence that in this campaign, once she’s elected, she will fight for growing the middle class from the middle out, that she will pay great attention to working-class voters and giving them opportunity to join the middle class.”
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