Tammy Duckworth’s stellar resume may not be enough for presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to pick her as his running mate.
The Illinois senator, 52, is one of about a dozen candidates Biden’s vice presidential selection committee will reportedly vet as it tries to balance the Democratic ticket heading into November’s elections.
Duckworth has repeatedly declined to confirm or deny whether she’s being considered, but she told The View Tuesday it was “breathtaking” to be discussed alongside “the chairwoman of the Tammy caucus in the Senate, Tammy Baldwin, and the likes of Amy Klobuchar,” referring to the Wisconsin and Minnesota Democrats on the shortlist.
“I’ll leave the Biden camp to their process. In the meantime, I’m going to work as hard as I can to get Joe Biden elected,” she said.
Duckworth has been a vocal advocate for Biden as Democrats coalesce in an effort to oust President Trump in the fall.
The senator hosted a campaign phone call for veterans of Asian American and Pacific Islander descent last weekend. She’s also agreed to an uptick in national TV interviews. In those appearances, she’s been pressed for comment on certain topics, such as Trump’s insistence he’ll give a West Point graduation address in person in June and the need to take better care of families with newborn babies during the coronavirus pandemic.
Although Duckworth has many firsts attributed to her name, she’s still a lower-tier contender for the understudy role.
The daughter of an American father who worked in international development and a Thai mother of Chinese descent, she became the first Thai American woman and the first Thai-born lawmaker elected to Congress when she flipped Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh’s northern Chicago district in 2012.
Duckworth spoke about the importance of having a minority woman in the No. 2 spot on Tuesday.
“It’s long overdue to have women and people of color to have equal representation in our nation’s government,” she said.
Yet pressure is mounting for Biden to choose a black woman, given how crucial the demographic’s support is to the two-term vice president and Delaware’s 36-year senator reclaiming the White House. Duckworth may be overlooked in favor of California Sen. Kamala Harris, 2018 Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, or Florida Rep. Val Demings based on that rationale.
Then there are Duckworth’s military credentials.
Duckworth, who grew up in Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Singapore before her family settled in Hawaii, is the first woman with a disability to win a seat in Congress.
Following her father into the U.S. Army, Duckworth deferred her postdoctoral studies to serve as a combat helicopter pilot in Iraq. The Purple Heart recipient lost both her legs and movement in her right arm when insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at her UH-60 Black Hawk in 2004. That distinction meant the lieutenant colonel became the first woman double amputee in the Senate as well when she ousted sitting Republican Mark Kirk in 2016.
At the same time, the former Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs has some baggage from her days as director of Illinois’s state-based department and its federal counterpart. In Illinois, she was sued for wrongful termination in 2009. The suit was settled seven years later in 2016 for $26,000 without an admission of guilt. In Washington, D.C., she received bad press for spending almost $100,000 on media training for her staff during 2010 and 2011.
Duckworth’s the first senator to give birth while in office, too, a rallying cry for working women.
After Duckworth, her Iraq War veteran husband Bryan Bowlsbey, and their first child, Abigail, welcomed a second daughter, Maile, to their brood in 2018, the Senate changed its rules to allow her to breastfeed on the chamber’s floor.
But despite her trailblazer track record, she’s not well-known.
She is a quiet, behind-the-scenes politician, and one of her only viral moments on Capitol Hill has been her grilling of a Virginia county CEO, Braulio Castillo, for fraudulently representing himself as a disabled military veteran in 2013.
Similarly, while her middle-of-the-road Democratic politics helped her beat Republicans and align with Biden’s own centrist positions, she may not excite the party’s liberal base.
For Northwestern University’s Laurel Harbridge-Yong, one advantage to Duckworth’s lack of name recognition is she wouldn’t be trapped by preconceived partisan notions. Her low profile could also let Biden shine.
“She doesn’t have a ton of experience, although some of the other possible VP nominees are similar in that,” she told the Washington Examiner.
Even though she hadn’t thought of Duckworth without being prompted, Harbridge-Yong added her Midwest appeal could connect with those who voted against the so-called coastal elite last cycle.
“I haven’t heard her name floated through as many places as I have heard some of the others, but I think that she brings a lot potentially to the ticket,” she said.
