Prospective running mates of major-party presidential candidates generally play coy, disclaiming interest in the vice presidency and emphasizing that they’re perfectly happy in their current roles.
Not so much with Stacey Abrams.
The 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee and former state House minority leader is openly campaigning for the 2020 vice presidential nomination.
“Yes. I would be honored,” Abrams told Elle when asked if she would be interested in the understudy role for Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.
“I would be an excellent running mate. I have the capacity to attract voters by motivating typically ignored communities. I have a strong history of executive and management experience in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. I’ve spent 25 years in independent study of foreign policy. I am ready to help advance an agenda of restoring America’s place in the world. If I am selected, I am prepared and excited to serve.”
Abrams became a national figure with her relatively close loss in the last Georgia governor’s race, notable because she was the first minority candidate to come that close to winning while running as an unapologetic liberal.
In trying to get Biden’s attention for the vice presidency, Abrams, 46, is taking a different tack from other potential Biden running mates.
“I’m going to help him vet and make sure he’s got a great running mate. It is not going to be me,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said after endorsing Biden. “But I’m going to have a hand in helping make sure that he has got the rounded-out ticket that can win.”
Whitmer’s approach is a standard political operating procedure for would-be vice presidential contenders. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, and then-Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Mitt Romney’s choice for the undercard slot on the ultimately losing 2012 Republican ticket, both largely kept mum about their interest in running for vice president. That helped mask the two career politicians’ fierce ambitions for higher office (Ryan got a measure of political redemption three years later when he ascended to House speaker.)
“What’s somewhat unique about Ms. Abrams’s approach is that most vice presidential candidates run sort of discreetly,” said Joel Goldstein, law professor at St. Louis University and author of The White House vice presidency: The path to significance, Mondale to Biden.
“They’re trying to conceal the fact that they’re running,” Goldstein told the Washington Examiner. “They try to encourage friends to put in a good word and write nice things about them. But they don’t come out and say, ‘I’d like to be vice president,'”
For the 2020 Democratic vice presidential nomination, Biden has said he’ll choose a woman. So, that automatically increases Abrams’s chances of being tapped, at least marginally. Yet, she’s not necessarily at the top of the list. The Yale Law School graduate brings state legislative experience but has not held a congressional post like former Biden rivals Sens. Kamala Harris of California or Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Moreover, there are limited examples of campaigning for vice president working.
In 1984, allies of then-Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York, a member of the House Democratic leadership, floated her name for vice president. Democratic nominee Walter Mondale, himself a former vice president, ended up choosing her, making her the first woman on a national ticket. The pair lost in a 49-state landslide against President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush.
And, in 1988, then-Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle “discreetly,” according to Goldstein, got his name into contention for the vice presidential slot by stepping up his public profile, including giving well-regarded Senate floor speeches on arms control. The Bush-Quayle ticket romped to victory that fall.
In 2004, after then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, his vanquished primary rival, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, went after the vice presidential slot with gusto. He instantly became Kerry’s most energetic surrogate, speaking at any event the nominee could attend.
“It had all the earmarks of a very carefully planned campaign,” a longtime adviser to Edwards told the Washington Post.
“A conventional wisdom developed that he was the most exciting option Kerry had. Edwards did a lot to impress Kerry himself and the people around him,” including fundraising, Goldstein said.
The effort worked, with Kerry tapping Edwards as his running mate, though the ticket went on to lose that fall to Republican President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Three-and-a-half years later, Edwards had far less luck persuading Barack Obama to find him a prominent political job. After losing the Iowa Democratic caucuses in January 2008, it was later discovered that he had privately asked Obama to appoint him to the vice presidential nomination, attorney general, or to his dream job, the Supreme Court.
Obama, the eventual Democratic nominee and future president, rebuffed the advances — wisely, it turned out. Edwards was at the time keeping a secret about his pregnant mistress and their love children, revelations that soon ended his political career.
