After Harris selected Walz as running mate, a look at the 2 men who came closest to being picked
(WASHINGTON) — When Gov. Josh Shapiro took the stage ahead of the newly minted Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he told the crowd — made up of thousands of his constituents — how much he enjoyed being their governor.
“I want you to know, every single day, I go to work for you,” he said to loud cheers.
Shapiro, who had been informed hours earlier he would not be Harris’ running mate, expressed the same sentiment in an earlier post on X after Harris announced her selection of Walz.
Indeed, Shapiro — whose strong popularity in a critical swing state made him an instant front-runner to join the Harris ticket — had concerns about leaving his role as governor, which he assumed just last year, a person familiar with the vetting process told ABC News.
The person cited Shapiro’s “love” of the job and, notably, of being in an executive role, suggesting that playing second fiddle to Harris may not have been a good fit.
In a condensed vetting process to find Harris’ running mate, in which the vice president’s team looked into roughly a dozen candidates, just three ended up holding in-person meetings with Harris and her team Sunday in Washington, D.C.: Walz, Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
Kelly met with Harris for roughly an hour and “walked out of it feeling really good,” a person with knowledge of his vetting process told ABC News, though Harris quickly appeared to narrow her options to Walz and Shapiro by Sunday night.
The near immediate emergence of Kelly’s name as a possible running mate surprised his team, and the opportunity “fell out of the sky” for a former astronaut who had not run for elected office until 2019, the person said, adding that Kelly was “playing with house money.”
That’s not to say the senator appreciated being passed over.
“He’s a very competitive guy,” a person who knows Kelly well, but hasn’t spoken to him in recent days, told ABC News.
“He doesn’t like losing.”
During the two-week sprint to find Harris’ running mate, the final vice presidential hopefuls received praise from Democratic strategists and elected officials — but each endured negative headlines.
Shapiro received the brunt of negative attention when progressives attacked him relentlessly for what they perceived to be a lack of empathy toward pro-Palestinian campus protestors this spring. Shapiro, who is Jewish, encouraged University of Pennsylvania officials to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment this spring, though he has also been critical of Israel, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “one of the worst leaders of our time.”
The governor was also challenged over his support for school vouchers and a nearly $300,000 settlement his administration entered into to resolve a sexual assault complaint against an ex-aide, who thereafter resigned.
(CHICAGO) — Vice President Kamala Harris will set out what Democratic officials are touting as a “bold vision for America’s future” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, as her campaign looks to maintain the momentum that has so irked former President Donald Trump.
The Democratic National Convention Committee on Sunday released a list of speakers for the Chicago event, which will run from Monday to Thursday. Each day will have a dedicated theme, bullet-pointing Harris’ presidential pitch to voters.
Primetime speakers will include former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, DNC officials have confirmed to ABC News.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will both speak on Monday night. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker will speak on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will give his vice presidential acceptance speech on Wednesday, with Harris taking the stage on Thursday to accept her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate.
Democratic officials have said that the convention will open on Monday with the theme, “For the people.” Tuesday will be dedicated to “a bold vision for America’s future,” and Wednesday to “a fight for our freedoms.”
Thursday, when Harris takes the stage, will be themed: “For our future.”
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance defended his past comments on women and families without children, the Trump campaign’s proposals to deport undocumented immigrants and more in a wide-ranging interview with “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, which airs in full on Sunday morning.
Despite the race tightening in recent weeks as Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the Democratic ticket, the Ohio senator emphasized that he and Trump are “extremely confident” in their chances of winning the election.
“I think we’re going to win. I also think that we have to work as hard as possible for the remainder of the election to try to persuade Americans to vote for us,” Vance told Karl. “That’s the name of the game.”
Vance elaborates on ‘pro-family’ views
The senator has come under fire for repeated comments made about childless Americans, including one during an interview in July 2021 with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson where Vance described leading Democrats including Harris as “childless cat ladies.”
In a speech before a conservative group, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which preceded that interview, Vance also suggested that people with children should have extra votes.
“The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds, but let’s do this instead,” Vance said in the speech. “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power.”
Vance told Karl his notion was a “thought experiment” in response to Democratic proposals to allow younger voters, and not a policy stance.
“Do I regret saying it? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign has, frankly, distorted what I said,” he said. “They turn this into a policy proposal that I never made. … I said, I want us to be more pro-family, and I do want us to be more pro-family.”
Vance added there are “policy positions behind my view that the country should become more pro-family.” He went on to talk about the economic struggles that families are facing, citing the increased cost of goods, rising medical bills and other costs.
The senator said that he and Trump have a plan to lower the cost of housing and food but didn’t provide details during the interview.
Trump said in an interview with Fox News last week that his solution to bringing down costs was, “We’re gonna drill, baby, drill.”
Trump has also advocated for more tariffs and tax cuts as part of his economic policies.
Vance responds to mass deportation plan: ‘Let’s start with 1 million’
The senator brought up the ongoing migrant crisis and again blamed Harris and the Biden administration’s policies, such as ending “Remain in Mexico.”
When asked how he and Trump would accomplish their stated goal of mass deporting as many as 20 million immigrants – a proposal experts previously told ABC News would be a “nightmare” — Vance said they would take a “sequential approach.”
“I mean do you go knock on doors and ask people for their papers? What do you do,” Karl asked.
“You start with what’s achievable,” Vance said. “I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem.”
“I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million. That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there,” Vance said.
Vance agrees with Trump that VP picks don’t matter to most voters During an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago last month, and just a short time after Trump announced Vance as his running mate, the former president raised some eyebrows when asked whether Vance would be ready to be president “on Day 1” if needed.
“You can have a vice president who’s outstanding in every way, and I think JD is, I think that all of them would’ve been, but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me,” Trump said, without addressing whether Vance would be ready on “Day 1.”
In the interview with ABC News, Vance said he agreed with Trump’s view.
“They’re voting for Donald Trump or for Kamala Harris, not for JD or Tim Walz,” he said. “I also think that he’s right that the politics of this really don’t matter that much.”
However, Vance stressed he’s “absolutely” sure Trump is confident he could step up as a commander in chief if needed.
“What I think that he does believe because he made it the main focus of his vetting process, is, ‘Do I think this person can be president on day one if, God forbid, something happens? Yes,'” Vance said.
Vance repeats false claims about Tim Walz’s policies
During a rally in Montana on Friday night, Trump pushed falsehoods about Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz’s policies concerning transgender youth, accusing the Minnesota governor of signing “a law letting the state kidnap children to change their gender.”
Walz has signed legislation aimed at protecting the rights of transgender individuals to access gender-affirming care, which can include gender-affirming surgeries but also services like counseling and non-surgical medical procedures like hormone therapy and puberty suppressants. The law does not allow what Trump claimed.
Vance said he didn’t fully watch the late-night rally but repeated some of those false claims in the interview with Karl, saying Walz “supported taking children away from their parents if the parents don’t consent to gender reassignment.”
He referenced Walz’s recent statement at a rally accusing Republicans of not “minding their own damn business.”
“One way of minding your own damn business, Jon, is to not try to take my children away from me … if I have different world views than you.”
Karl pushed back, calling the “kidnapping” characterization “crazy.”
The April 2023 law that Walz signed in the wake of other states curtailing or banning access to gender-affirming care has been mischaracterized by Republicans.
The Minnesota law protects patients who come to the state to receive gender-affirming health care, even if the patients live in a state where such care is illegal. The law also specifically allows the state’s courts to assume “temporary emergency jurisdiction” in cross-state child custody disputes where a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming care and is in Minnesota to do so.
The executive director of LGBTQ+ advocacy group OutFront told The Washington Post that under the law, courts can settle parental disputes over whether their child should get this care, but it doesn’t result in the parent against such care losing custody of their child.
Vance pushes back on white supremacist Trump once dined with who recently insulted his wife’s race
Karl also asked Vance about a racist attack targeting his wife, Usha, from white nationalist live-streamer, Nick Fuentes, who Trump dined with in November 2022.
In a recent livestream, Fuentes said, “What kind of man marries somebody named Usha Clearly, he doesn’t value his racial identity.”
“My attitude to these people attacking my wife is, she’s beautiful, she’s smart. What kind of man marries Usha A very smart man and very lucky man,” Vance said of his wife during the ABC News interview. “If these guys want to attack me or attack my views, my policy views, [or] my personality, come after me. But don’t attack my wife. She’s out of your league.”
Trump faced significant blowback for dining with Fuentes, along with rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) back in November 2022 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. At the time, Trump said he did not know who Fuentes was and that he was brought to the dinner by Ye. In a statement given exclusively to Fox News Digital, Trump said, “I had no idea what his views were, and they weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted.”
But the former president has not denounced Fuentes’ white nationalist views beyond that, or the recent comments about Usha Vance.
In the interview, Vance contended Trump had “issued plenty of condemnations,” and did not question the former president’s dinner with Fuentes.
“The one thing I like about Donald Trump, Jon, is that he actually will talk to anybody. But just because you talk to somebody doesn’t mean you endorse their views,” Vance said, adding that Trump has been close and friendly with his family.
ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — World famous as entertainers, celebrities are not usually relied on for their political expertise.
Yet candidates across the political spectrum in 2024 have been keen on highlighting star power at their campaign events.
Musical performances by Megan Thee Stallion, Quavo, and Bon Iver brought crowds to their feet during recent Kamala Harris rallies.
Last month, musician Kid Rock and model Amber Rose were among the celebrities featured at the Republican National Convention.
It turns out, a new study finds, that celebrities do more than merely generate online buzz — they can actually influence elections.
According to the research by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, there is “rigorous evidence that [celebrity] voices are incredibly powerful” in promoting civic engagement and altering polling numbers.
“Right now, young voters have relatively low levels of trust in a lot of leaders and institutions, including traditional news media — but celebrities are often a rare exception,” Ashley Spillane, the study’s author and a civic engagement and political expert, told ABC News.
Published on Friday, the study discusses how America falls behind other highly developed democratic nations in terms of the number of eligible voters who actually cast votes.
Spillane noted that “despite record-breaking voter participation levels in recent elections, the United States still ranks 31st out of 50 developed nations in terms of eligible voter participation.”
She says lack of motivation and mobilization is one of the main reasons behind that ranking, and celebrities could be key in addressing the lack of participation.
Spillane said the culture surrounding civic engagement needs to change.
“Voting should be the trendy, cool thing to do,” she said. “And the study shows there is evidence that when people feel this way about voting, they participate.”
In terms of shifting this culture, celebrities are “uniquely positioned to empower everyday Americans,” the study said. Online voter registration and poll worker volunteer rates were found to increase when a celebrity promoted them.
“What the study finds is that sharing information that allows people to take action (a registration link, a way to find your polling place, when Election Day is!) can have the most impact,” Spillane added.
Back in 2018, Taylor Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote by posting a simple Instagram story, resulting in 250,000 new Vote.org registrants in 72 hours.
In a similar fashion, Kylie Jenner utilized Instagram to urge her followers to vote in 2020, and “the site to which she linked reported a 1,500% increase in traffic compared to the day before — and an 80% increase in total users registering to vote,” the study said.
Actress Kerry Washington communicated outside her fanbase and recruited other celebrities to promote civic engagement. The study referenced $32 million in organic earned media coverage, as well as one billion online engagements as a result of her efforts.
Ariana Grande, David Dobrik, Hailey Bieber, Billie Eilish, Trevor Noah were among other celebrities studied. Offline engagements such as television, movies, and merchandise were included in the research set as well.
The study also emphasized how “authenticity moves the needle on civic engagement,” making it crucial for celebrity efforts to align with their public interests and overall platform in order to be effective.
Although some celebrities remain wary of “potential backlash and ‘canceling,'” the study found that those who encourage voter participation believe it is “good for democracy” and “good for their brands.”
As seen throughout the current election cycle, celebrities have even inspired civic engagement without their explicit knowledge or intention.
For example, Swifties for Kamala represents a group of Taylor Swift fans promoting Harris’ campaign. Their X account currently has over 57,000 followers.
Swift has yet to comment on the group created in her namesake, or on the election itself.
Though the Harvard study did not explicitly focus on such sub-groups, Spillane told ABC News that “fan communities getting involved in civic engagement enables them to be a part of something collaborative, which helps build trust in the democratic process and motivation to participate.”
Just this past month, British hyperpop artist Charli XCX posted, “Kamala IS brat,” on X, amassing over 54.5 million views and catalyzing millions of memes and video edits. This one celebrity post inadvertently contributed to the Harris campaign’s digital success and Gen-Z outreach.
“Charli XCX’s post is a great example of a celebrity’s ability to garner media coverage, attract large crowds, reach their fans, and influence conversation,” Spillane observed.
Gen-Z and millennial groups are of particular importance given that they will comprise the majority of voters by 2028, the study confirmed. In addition to the significant screen time that both groups average each day on social media, such platforms were also found to be their primary source of news.
Given such findings, a close eye is likely to follow celebrity voices throughout the remainder of this historic and tumultuous election cycle.
“The evidence is clear that, using their powerful platforms, these influential figures can encourage and empower more everyday Americans to use their voices and exercise their civic rights,” Spillane said.