The Racial Politics of the Vice Presidency

• In Event: Perspectives on Presidential Leadership

Abstract

This paper will examine the changing racial politics of vice presidential selection. In 2020, at a time when the nation had entered a tumultuous period of “racial reckoning,” Kamala Harris was elected to the vice presidency. While Harris was the first woman of color to be nominated and subsequently elected to this role, racial identities and stances have long shaped vice presidential politics. We argue that race is an overlooked element of running mate selection, engaging party dynamics both before and after the McGovern-Fraser reforms to the nomination system. Our paper makes three claims:

1.Vice presidential selection has been part of how presidential candidates respond to civil rights pressures.


Our analysis starts with Lyndon Johnson’s choice of Senator Hubert Humphrey to be his running mate in 1964. That choice was made in the context of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenge at the Democratic convention to seating the all-white Mississippi delegation, which LBJ believed might be a stalking horse for a floor challenge by Robert Kennedy. Humphrey’s solution to this problem, by sidelining the MFDP, set the stage for LBJ’s choice of him as VP. Running mate selection was also part of Nixon’s efforts to harness the electoral benefits of backlash against civil rights, with the selection of Spiro Agnew as his 1968 running mate.

2.The persistent selection of white running mates in an increasingly racially polarized era has been a political and racial choice.

We examine the dynamics by which Black and Latino candidates from both parties have appeared on running mate lists, only to be discarded at final selection, and examine the dynamics in each party that led to these decisions. This analysis includes Mondale’s 1984 decision to select a running mate outside the usual parameters, ultimately selecting a white woman, Geraldine Ferraro, with “tough on crime” credentials.

3.Building on the previous argument, we argue that running mates are sometimes selected in efforts to sidestep the issue of race, and these efforts can ultimately prove to be misguided. The case we examine here is Hillary Clinton’s selection of Tim Kaine in 2016, creating an all-white ticket at a time when maintaining a multi-racial coalition was crucial for electoral victory.

Authors

• William D. Adler, Northeastern Illinois University

• Julia Rezazadeh Azari, Marquette University