Montgomery County, Pennsylvania — Unsurprisingly, Gov. Josh Shapiro isn’t directly saying he wants to be Kamala Harris’ vice president. But in his stump for the current vice president, Shapiro’s message for what he brings to the table as her running mate is clear.
“Three simple letters that I reflect on every day: GSD — Getting Shit Done,” he said to a crowd of over 1,000 on Monday evening.
Shapiro is bringing his pitch for Harris on the road across Pennsylvania while avoiding saying the quiet part out loud: that he’s positioning himself as a vice presidential front-runner.
For his Monday appearance, Shapiro had a vocal campaigner alongside him in Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. While originally in the vice presidential conversation herself, Whitmer has backed away, telling CBS News on Monday morning that she plans to remain the governor until the end of her term in 2026.
Whitmer, a co-chair of the Harris campaign, also said she expects a vice presidential decision to come in the next week. She didn’t endorse Shapiro but spent considerable time praising the governor and drawing parallels between them.
“Pennsylvanians are a lot like Michiganders, and Wisconsinites for that matter; we disagree during Big Ten football season, but we’ve got a lot in common,” Whitmer said. “We care about one another. We’re willing to show up and do hard, tough work. And we take pride in our work.”
Shapiro didn’t make any comments on his vice presidential ambitions, but his stump speech for Harris gives a clear vision for what he would bring to the ticket, most notably a boost to Harris’ chances to win in Pennsylvania — a state which is almost essential to her winning coalition.
“It is so good to be home,” Shapiro said Monday. The governor grew up in Montgomery County, and represented the area in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. “You sent me to the capital to fight for you, and I have never forgotten the lessons you taught me along the way.”
It also helps that the Philadelphia suburbs, where Shapiro was raised, are essential to Harris’ chances in Pennsylvania.
Shapiro won his attorney general race by 4 points in 2020. Two years later, he sailed to the governor’s office by 15 points. His critics point to that wide margin as more to do with conservative opponent Doug Mastriano’s flubs than Shapiro himself, but the governor’s appeal among Republicans is impossible to dismiss entirely in a state as close as Pennsylvania.
The same year Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes, Shapiro won his first statewide race by over 300,000.
On Monday, Shapiro highlighted his bipartisan record as governor, funding the state police while simultaneously promoting criminal justice reform and promoting union employment.
“Freedom means worshipping where you want, living how you want and experiencing the bountiful freedom all across this nation, in rural, urban and suburban communities. That is real freedom, and that’s what we’re fighting for,” he said.
While he made his pitch for Harris, Shapiro spent far more time bashing Trump’s record, addressing the former president directly.
“I’ve got a message for Donald Trump: stop shit-talking America. This is the greatest country on the face of the Earth. Let’s start acting like it,” he said.
Shapiro briefly acknowledged “Pennsylvania’s own” in President Joe Biden. For the working-class voters who saw themselves in the boy from Scranton, Shapiro said Harris is the obvious torchbearer for his legacy.
“He chose Kamala Harris to not just campaign with him; he chose Kamala Harris because he wanted to govern with her and because he knew she was ready,” he said.
The question at the top of the mind for Democrats in the crowd is whether Shapiro is ready too.
Gordon Lawson, a 75-year-old retired lineworker who saw John F. Kennedy speak in Pennsylvania in 1960, said he hadn’t seen a candidate like JFK until Harris.
“I was kind of heartbroken when [Biden] pulled out. But somehow, magically, I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like somebody threw an electric switch, and all of a sudden, everybody’s energized,” Lawson said. “I don’t think I’ve ever quite seen anything like this.”
He called Shapiro a “solid shooter,” someone who’s reached across the aisle as governor. But for Lawson, choosing Shapiro over another candidate is “a question of mathematics.”
“We’ve got 19 electoral votes, and that’s not something you give up easy,” he said. “Shapiro would help Pennsylvania. It might be just a small edge, but I think we’ll take everything we got.”
Gary Neights, a board of superiors member in Lower Providence Township in Eagleville, noted that Pennsylvania is a purple state.
Neights said Shapiro had done a “good job” of reaching across the aisle.
“He’s good politically, but also in terms of the execution,” Neights said.
But even among the fired up base on Shapiro’s home turf — perhaps the friendliest Shapiro crowd out there — there was still some doubt about him as vice presidential candidate.
There is, of course, Shapiro’s vocal support for Israel in the Gaza war. And there are a myriad of local issues that could damage Shapiro.
Lawson pointed to Shapiro’s school voucher advocacy in the state as a potential problem nationally. And Robert Dawley, a biology professor at Ursinus College, mentioned a top staffer who was accused of sexual harassment and abruptly resigned last fall.
“Shapiro has some possible negatives,” Dawley said. “This is her first big choice. So the choice she makes actually tells us something about her because most of us don’t know that much about her. So I think she has to be careful.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.