Josh Shapiro could become the first Jewish US vice president

Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro's strong Jewish identity and his ties with Israel will be a factor in whether he becomes Kamala Harris' running mate in November.

Shapiro, 51, is on the short list of potential picks for the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate. He is contending with fellow governors Andy Beshear (Kentucky), Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), Tim Walz (Minnesota), JB Pritzker (Illinois, and also Jewish), and Roy Cooper (North Carolina), as well as Senator Mark Kelly (Arizona, whose wife is Jewish) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The latter, in particular, has received acclaim recently for his smooth handling of public appearances everywhere from Fox News to The Daily Show.

Harris interviewed prospects last weekend and has a Tuesday evening rally (US time) scheduled in Philadelphia to kick off a seven-state tour with her running mate.

At the heart of presidential campaigns in the Unites States is the calculation of how to get to 270 Electoral College votes. For Kamala Harris to cross that threshold, it is widely viewed that there are three swing states that she must win: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, awarding 10, 15, and 19 votes respectively.

These are three midwestern states that Hilary Clinton unexpectedly lost to Trump in 2016 but Biden flipped to the Democratic column in 2020.

Shapiro can clearly help Harris cross the mark in Pennsylvania. He won his 2022 governor’s race with 56% of the vote, having run a strong grassroots campaign with record-breaking fundraising. He remains very popular in his home state, has worked with bipartisan effectiveness, and displays a public speaking style at times reminiscent of Obama.

At his 2023 swearing in, Shapiro placed his hand on a Torah from the Tree of Life Synagogue, where 11 Jews were murdered by a white nationalist. An observant Conservative Jew, Shapiro met his wife in high school at a Hebrew academy and proposed to her in Jerusalem. He does not equivocate about his Jewish identity or his love for Israel.

In the gubernatorial campaign, Shapiro’s opponent, Trump-endorsed Doug Mastriano, demonised aspects of Shapiro’s Jewish identity and, as reported in The Forward, openly sought the support of white nationalists.

Undaunted, Shapiro leaned into his Jewish identity, speaking of his faith, Shabbat, and kashrut. Riding a 15-point margin to victory, he set up a kosher kitchen in the governor’s mansion before taking occupancy.

This was all before October 7 placed anyone remotely Zionist or even Jewish subject to attack by extremist pro-Palestinian and Leftist forces.

Again undaunted, Shapiro had one of the strongest responses among governors to antisemitic harassment and threats to Jewish faculty and students on university campuses. After months of inaction by University of Pennsylvania administrators, Shapiro publicly called them to account and, the very next day, they complied, removing the pro-Palestine encampment from campus.

All of this will stand Shapiro in good stead with Pennsylvania’s nearly half a million Jews, whose support was significant in Biden’s 80,000-vote victory out of some six million votes.

But in these troubled times, a Jewish candidate, let alone one who is proudly Zionist, is sure to come under attack.

Writing in The Forward, Rafael Shimuvov maintains that “Democrats need to unite a Left divided over Israel. Shapiro’s actions [on the pro-Palestine encampment] will hurt that enterprise”. Shimuvov, invoking his own Jewishness, takes issue with Shapiro’s entire framing of the campus protests.

This amounts to what Jonathan Tobin, in another context, has described as “a quintessential ‘as a Jew’ moment in which persons invoke their Jewish identity to denounce other Jews”.

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, a retired professor at Temple University and a member of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, told The Forward that “the governor’s perspective is not nuanced when it comes to Israel”. 

Ahmet Tekelioglu, Philadelphia director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a 2022 supporter of Shapiro, said “our communities felt like they were betrayed by the governor after October 7”.

Tekelioglu’s comment highlights how, as much as Shapiro might help Harris in Pennsylvania, he might pose a risk in Michigan, home to the nation’s  largest Muslim population. Michigan is the state where, in the March Democratic primary, more than  100,000 voters came out to the polls to vote “Uncommitted” as a protest against what they labelled “genocide Joe” Biden’s support for Israel.

Kamala Harris is widely viewed as defusing the Palestinian issue. She is seen as more sensitive and outspoken on the crises afflicting the Palestinian people while still strong in support of Israel. There is concern that adding Shapiro to the ticket could bring the charges of supporting “genocide” back into the campaign.

There is also a concern whether Harris, of Indian and Jamaican heritage and with a Jewish husband, would be weakened by adding  more diversity to the ticket. Would adding a Jewish vice president (whether Shapiro of Spritzker), another woman (Whitmer), or a gay man (Buttigieg) be more than centrist voters could bear?

This calculus could switch the spotlight onto  Minnesota’s Tim Walz, who Ezra Klein of The New York Times called “the Midwestern dad America needs.” Walz gained national prominence last month by telling a morning talk show that Trump and Vance “are just weird”, a phrasing that quickly went viral. Or Andy Beshear, twice elected in a state that went strongly for Trump, who The New York Times called “the amiable attack dog from Kentucky”.

Ultimately, Harris’ choice of vice president boils down to four factors: ability to garner votes, ability to raise funds, ability to effectively articulate the Harris campaign agenda, and the ability to forcefully push back against the misogyny, racism, and authoritarian impulses of  Donald Trump and JD Vance. It is the last of these that will ensure that Harris’ vice-presidential pick will be aligned with the interests of the Jewish community.

In a roundtable of New York Times opinion writers, liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg maintained that “it will probably be Shapiro, because Pennsylvania is basically the ballgame in November.” Her conservative colleague Ross Douthat concurred. Goldberg added that “there’s something extremely exciting about [a Harris-Shapiro ticket], just as there was when Georgia elected a Black Democrat and a Jewish Democrat as senators”, referring to the election of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in January, 2021 which gave the Democrats control of the Senate.

But the time for speculation is past. The decision, if not already made, is upon us, if not today, then tomorrow. Rest assured, either way, that Josh Shapiro has been a significant part of the conversation.

Note: neither Shapiro nor Spritzker would be the first Jewish VP candidate. That would be the late Senator Joseph Lieberman, who ran with Al Gore in 2000.

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