Harris sees opening in Vance pick as she considers her own choice for vice president

(CNN) — Kamala Harris’ plan as a running mate was to brush past JD Vance as nothing but a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. But now that she’s the presumptive Democratic nominee, her campaign is seizing on the Ohio senator as a major liability, looking to her own vice presidential selection process and the contenders’ public auditions to drive home the point.

Vance’s elevation — despite his relative lack of government experience — is giving Harris a new opportunity to go after Trump. The message is not just that Vance is “weird,” as the vice president said at a fundraiser this weekend, or that he has objectionable views, advisers said; it’s that the Ohio senator shouldn’t be a heartbeat away from the presidency, and that Trump picking him raises more questions about the top of the ticket.

The strategy is also a way to put Trump’s age in focus, now that President Joe Biden is not part of the conversation, by highlighting how close Vance could be to occupying the Oval Office if something were to happen to a 78-year-old president. And poking holes in Vance’s resume — as some potential Harris running mates are doing — is a way for them to argue that Republicans are holding the presumptive Democratic nominee to a different standard when they attack her as a “DEI hire.”

“We have a Black woman, we have a White guy, and nobody asked the white guy” about experience, Harris campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu told CNN.

After Vance was announced as Trump’s pick and while Democrats were still waiting to see whether Biden would exit the race, Harris told several advisers she saw Trump’s choice as doubling down on his MAGA base rather than expanding the appeal of the ticket. She and her team were excited to face Vance as opposed to the others on the former president’s short list, eager to tag him as a hypocrite and Trump sycophant.

But now, as her prospective running mates take turns whacking Vance over his controversial comments about women without children and his flip-flopping on Trump, as well as questioning his Appalachian roots, Harris’ team is holding Vance up against the people on her own short list to try to strike a contrast.

The 39-year-old Ohio Republican is “one of the most unprepared people that we have ever put up to hold the vice presidency of the United States,” Landrieu said, with qualifications that don’t go much beyond the constitutional minimum of being a naturally born American citizen who is 35 years old.

“He didn’t even run a business. He’s never run anything. And he’s about to be one heartbeat away from the largest entity in the world, and the one that’s the most important,” Landrieu said. “So it’s a fair question to ask: How would we know whether you have the capability to run domestic and national security policy for the most powerful country in the world, which you may be called to do on a moment’s notice?”

Harris, who was first elected to the Senate in 2016, spent as much time in the chamber as Vance, who was first elected in 2022, before she started preparing in 2018 to run for president. And while Vance has won statewide office, those on Harris’ short list — which includes several governors, a senator and one Cabinet secretary — have served more time in government than Vance and have leadership experience in a variety of previous offices, business and the military (and NASA).

Cedric Richmond, the former Louisiana congressman and Biden White House adviser who also serves as a campaign co-chair, said he is “terrified” to think about Vance being in a position to become president overnight.

Several people hoping to get picked as Harris’ ticket mate echoed that message as they angle for the job.

“I’ve done a lot of hiring in my life — in business and nonprofits, in government — and it’s pretty obvious when someone’s resume shows that they can’t hold down a job or haven’t held down a job for more than a year or two at a time, that there’s something wrong with them,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who’s among those being vetted, referring to Vance’s brief stints in business positions before jumping into the 2022 Senate race in Ohio.

Pritzker said that not only are the potential Democratic picks more experienced, but they also have been more consistent in their positions than Vance, who has shifted from worrying privately eight years ago that Trump could be “America’s Hitler” to saying he was won over completely by how Trump performed as president.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — who ran for president four years ago after serving as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana — made a similar point between interviews in his own public auditioning to move up Harris’ list.

“I’m somebody who believes that younger people can bring something to the table,” said the 42-year-old Buttigieg, who argued that his relatively few years in government service weren’t an issue since Trump had changed the game for what counted as political experience. “But I think when you have no executive experience at all, certainly not in public administration, and very little experience in public office in general, that’s a real concern.”

Trump communications director Steven Cheung called Vance “the best choice to be the next vice president of the United States, while Kamala has been cosplaying the role since she was selected by Biden.”

He attacked Harris as “the most unserious presidential candidate in a generation,” adding, “No matter who Kamala chooses, she can’t whitewash her dismal record serving as Biden’s failed border czar, overseeing out-of-control inflation, and releasing violent criminals back into communities.”

Harris weighs her past experience in her selection

While former Attorney General Eric Holder is supervising the official vetting for Harris, the actual decision-making is kept to a tight circle around the vice president, led by her campaign chief of staff, Sheila Nix, and her vice presidential office chief of staff, Lorraine Voles. They’re making many of the calls themselves, and getting even more from old and new friends assured of their own political expertise as they push their preferred picks.

Harris, 59, has the unique experience of leading a selection process only four years after going through it herself.

That process — and the way she then had to navigate the job under intense scrutiny — has been on her mind in conversations with, among others, Biden and former President Barack Obama, people familiar with her thinking told CNN, with Biden’s forceful comments about her readiness resonating for her as she makes this choice.

Though she will be looking not just at what jobs the contenders held but also what they did in those positions, advisers say her process is not going to be as simple as comparing resumes.

“We’re in a position where somebody has done the job of vice president,” a Harris adviser told CNN. “She knows the challenges of this world in a way that you have to have somebody who has a deep amount of resilience.”

Those considerations are intertwined with immediate concerns that she has continued to stress in internal meetings: needing to unify the party and remember that, despite her meteoric first week as a candidate, “We’re the underdogs in this race,” as she put it at a fundraiser in Massachusetts on Saturday afternoon.

As was the case when Biden was in his final deliberations about her four years ago, Harris believes that the foremost factor has to be who is going to help her win, her advisers say.

“Harris will select a vice president who is qualified and ready to serve the American people, protect their freedoms, and fight for their future,” said campaign spokesperson James Singer, again trying to paint a contrast by reiterating a charge Harris herself has made — that Trump picked Vance because he supported his bid to overturn the 2020 election.

Questioning Trump’s age and health

With Biden out of the race, Trump is now the much older candidate. He is overweight, known to love fast food and has a philosophical objection to exercise. He has never released his full medical records.

To Harris aides, that makes who he picked as a running mate an even more pressing issue.

When then-Arizona Sen. John McCain picked then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in 2008, he faced charges of recklessness for selecting someone with so little experience, given that he was then the oldest first-time presidential nominee and had already been through a bout of cancer. McCain in 2008 was about six years younger than Trump is now. Palin had a few more months as governor of Alaska — and before that, as mayor and a City Council member of her little town of Wasilla — than Vance has spent in the Senate.

Trump is the only American president elected without previous government or military experience. And even if he picked Vance to be less of a governing partner than someone who could carry on his political movement, Trump has said he believes the Ohio Republican would be a good president.

Asked about Democrats highlighting Trump’s age, his national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made an argument similar to one Democrats were making just a few weeks ago: “It’s not about age, it’s about competence.”

Still, that doesn’t change the actuarial realities that Democrats are much more eager to talk about now that they’re no longer defending Biden.

“It has to make you wonder about Donald Trump’s judgment. He knows how old he is,” Pritzker said. “And so the idea that he would pick somebody a heartbeat away from the presidency, with so little experience — and in particular has so little experience running anything — it should just raise a lot of questions in people’s minds.”

“Given questions about President Trump’s health, as well as his advanced age, the selection of a running mate here is as important as any since FDR’s last campaign — and JD Vance is no Harry Truman,” Buttigieg said.

Roosevelt was 62 during his last campaign in 1944.

“Father Time is undefeated,” Richmond said, “and [Vance] being that close to it, with that amount of experience and with the lack of seriousness or appreciation for the job — that should concern a lot of people.”

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