As recently as last week, Kamala Harris appeared to be on the cusp of picking Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) as her running mate. Despite the progressive backlash against him and a slew of scandalous leaks, he was the runaway frontrunner in the betting odds as conventional wisdom held that Kamala needed a "moderate" swing state Democrat to help expand her path to 270 Electoral College votes.
Shapiro's chances remained high even after he faced serious allegations by a fellow Democrat of covering up harassment in his office. The sexual harassment cover-up didn't take Shapiro out of contention, and neither did another cover-up — this one involving murder.
In 2011, 27-year-old Ellen Greenberg, a first-grade teacher, was found dead in the apartment she shared with her fiancé, Sam Goldberg. Her body was discovered on the kitchen floor with a knife in her chest and 20 stabs and slash wounds, half of which were in the back of her neck and head. Initially, Philadelphia Assistant Medical Examiner Marlon Osbourne ruled her death a homicide. However, after police publicly challenged this finding, Osbourne changed the ruling to suicide without explanation.
Related: Why Did Kamala Harris Pick Tim Walz?
In 2019, then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Shapiro supported the suicide determination when the case reached his desk—and many speculate his connection to the fiancé's family was the reason. Shapiro, for his part, seemed to be actively campaigning for the job, going so far as to abandon his faith and principles to help make himself palatable to the progressive, antisemitic wing of the Democratic Party.
Take a look at this report from Politico (emphasis in the original):
Why not Shapiro? By contrast, Pennsylvania Gov. JOSH SHAPIRO’s team felt that his own interview with Harris did not go as well as it could have. There was “not a great feeling” coming out of it, according to a person in touch with Shapiro’s advisers. A person familiar with the selection process told our colleagues that, after their meeting on Sunday, Shapiro called Harris’ team and made clear that he was “struggling with the decision to leave his current job as governor, in order to seek the vice presidency.”
Does anyone believe that Shapiro was "struggling with the decision to leave his current job as governor"? Of course, he wasn't. This sounds like Shapiro realized that the risk of joining the Harris ticket was too high after the terrible jobs report on Friday and the subsequent stock market crash on Monday.
In other words, he dropped out.
If Shapiro was really having difficulty with the idea of leaving his current job, he would have taken himself out of contention around the same time that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) and Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) did. Cooper claimed he wants to run for the Senate in 2026 — because it's totally normal to pass on the chance to be vice president. Like Cooper, Shapiro, who obviously wanted the job, likely read the tea leaves and bailed.
It was likely a politically smart decision for him, and he allowed himself to forge his own path forward without being tied to Harris. He'll likely seek a second term as governor, and it will be much easier for him to win bipartisan support in a swing state linking to her radical agenda.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member